Imaginary Bonfire

Today was search and delete....
removing photographic  memories frozen in time,
placed where I might someday trip upon them
and slip into a wistful melancholy.
I wish it was so easy to
delete those memories from my mind.
I would reach in and toss them
upon the flames
until all traces were gone.
Even though I have been easily forgotten, and quickly replaced,
the images of the past haunt me when I least expect it.
Trying to open the door to new memories
and having to stack upon what is already there,
my own personal overstuffed storage locker.
I truly wish I could extricate them, laser them
to non-existence, so I could be like you,
and coldly look at all the years
like a collector gazes upon his ill-gotten treasures,
wondering what they were worth, and not caring about
their beauty and joy.
If you carried those same memories and actually
acknowledged their beauty..then all of this
might never have happened.
But it did, so I shall drag in wood, make the fire burn
hotter, and cast those memories in;
watching years burn to ash and cinders...
and feel no warmth from the flames.