Not Me With All These Sins, About to Cast All These Stones

“I was lost, I was lost
Crossed lines I shouldn’t have crossed
…
How long must you pay for it?”
—Coldplay, ‘In My Place’

These past few years I have relived everything (we once met an old couple
In Corfu, I think it was, the “we” being me and my first girlfriend. God I was cruel to her
(They’d worked together at Clarks shoes and had lived in the low-cost housing on the site of the factory
In Street. They dumped so much on us that holiday! They were reliving everything too)); and

It can be so innocuous, what comes back, though it has been a thorough,
Thorough bombardment of memories for me, at times, and I have felt quite guilty
(And annoyed! They simply would not be quiet! And they were on that terrace
Every! bloody! evening! I just wanted to speak to my girlfriend

But I couldn’t (and now, an hour or so later, at least two
Other holidays have come back to me (along with other pettiness
And cruelty) as I still
Only discard my days in the sun here

Vaguely—cowardly—as I write
And peel away more and more vacant memories
That seem only to highlight others)) while they
Ruined our whole trip for us!

(A version of this poem was first published in The Poetry Lighthouse, January 2025 (https://www.thepoetrylighthouse.com/poems?author=67895f97e13a9f080f97d21f))