Of bitter memories I drank too deep
and found cold comfort in the acid taste.
There, bare-faced ghosts were open in their haste
to let our friendship sink into death's sleep,
as if I'd yield a treasure (theirs to reap)
but after harvest, naught to them but waste.
--Your smile widens on a stranger's face,
whose laughter echoes somewhere far from me.
I wonder if I made a grave mistake,
when I into my bitter mind withdrew
and held those past unspoken rules as law:
That smile's true enough to swell the ache
in my heart's dusty corner (kept for you),
and something frozen in me yearns to thaw.