Ice Cream Dreams

This is a poem I wrote after I broke up with someone I was with for two years.

You told me to forget;
But those soaring moments of euphoria
Are stuck in my mind.
And what did you expect?
Months that stretched behind us
Just trickling away
Like the water from the fountain we watched together.

At least my suspicions finally became tangible.
When I thought you were lost
Inside my arms
You were in fact lost in the arms
Of someone who was not me.
She returned to you,
Somewhere I could not reach you;
In your dreams.
Her face floating over mine
Until our memories slowly drifted away.
All of those months,
Those late night phone calls,
The days we retired to bed early
And revelled in the pure, joyous fact we could
Are now tainted by what you could not forget:
Her kisses, not mine.

So you ask me to forget
But those coffee-shop crosswords,
Those silent hotel nights
Are things I cannot shake out of my mind.
Licking fingers clean of
Those sticky ice cream dreams
We could have shared.