My Poem “The Lock of Our Lost Love”

A long time ago,
I put a padlock with our names on it
onto a bridge next to countless others,
and after I attached our lock -
the lock that, to me, at the time,
signified our unending love for one another -
I threw the key to our lock
into the water of the river below;
and I never foresaw that I would
ever regret doing what I did -
however, now, I have to say, I do,
because what we once had is no more,
and whenever I think of that lock
it makes me feel sad,
because our love, as it turns out,
was a lie from beginning to end -
because we were once lovers,
but now we are not even friends.

I wish I could find that lock -
the one that I put on that bridge
all those years ago -
and break it, just as my heart was broken,
because it now symbolises
how foolish I was to have allowed
myself to fall for you
and to believe your lies...
I wish I still remembered what
the key to that lock looked like -
because, maybe if I did, I would
choose to dive to the bottom
of that river and retrieve it
so that I could use it
to unlock that which now feels meaningless;
however, there are most likely
many other keys to be found
in the water underneath the bridge -
so my chances of finding the right key
for the right lock are slim, at best,
but I think it would be worth a shot.

Maybe I should just try
and forget about what once was - us -
and that which once meant so much;
but the truth is that moving on
is harder than it sounds,
especially when you still have
a head full of memories
and shared experiences,
and somewhere in the world
there still remains things
that were placed somewhere in particular
with the intention that they stay
where they are forever,
even though you wish you could
remove them and throw them away -
things like carved initials in an oak tree,
graffiti on a wall,
dedications within books,
or names written upon a lock
that will continue to be
a source of pain whenever
you think of them, or see them,
because they make you remember
what you once had with someone
and that one day when
all that used to mean everything
suddenly came to a stop
and then became lost.