Mere Imaginings

Almost everything
I remember
Of you
Are mere imaginings

Just the stories
Shared
Of a man
Long gone
Made real
By the desperate
Longings of a son
To feel
Something
Anything
For his father
Other than shame

My dwindling pride
Clinging
To the hope
That perhaps
You were once
Something more
Than the shell
You became

I tell them
I never knew that man
That those memories
Are not mine
Yet now
Those lies
They are all I have of you
Beyond the small scatterings
Of pain
I learnt to forget

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This poem is from the book A Requiem For What Could Have Been: Poetry For The Broken