Archeology

At the bottom of a shoebox

from some old pair I long ago outgrew,

or wore out with miles and miles

of walking through my life,

I found your picture, stuck,

not by glue, but by time and moisture

and the blue ink scrawled across the back,

letters and words now blurred together,

barely readable by my old bifocal-ed eyes,

head tilted back, peering down my nose,

drawing the photo closer, pushing it away

to make sense of these blue smears,

loops and swirls running together

Or washed away, a blue stain remaining;

my name stood out clearly, though,

as did yours, but like all the years

and miles in-between us then, too young,

and now, the words blurred, illegible,

just as our love blurred since we parted

and our lives went the way lives go,

on and on and on, and the picture became

an artifact of some ancient time forgotten,

buried now in ruins, grown over with the vines

and tangles I let take over in my leaving,

years and years of old growth obscuring,

covering, blotting out a time before

until this archeological dig in the ruins

of my own life, hacking through vines

and tangles, tearing them away, revealing

this shoebox holding you and a life we shared

before I left and the world changed us;

I’d forgotten this simpler time of love

shared in the innocence of youth

where what mattered most was us  

and being together and the world

was conquerable outside the bubble

we’d wrapped ourselves in, believing

ourselves immortal, but like the Incas

and Mayans and old Phoenicians

we died out mysteriously,

found, discovered, rediscoverd

years later in the bottom of a shoebox,

blurred runes on the back of your picture,

faded and creased, barely readable,

the crypic runes of what might have been,

ancient words of a time now gone.