Suddenly Maureen, Again

A photo on Facebook:

a face unseen in decades,
a name like an icon
clicks open to unexpected
emotions welling, suppressed
memories of forgotten feelings bubble up,
and yet, tagged with too few details, nothing
but overarching images remain: Rosedale rooms
and St. George Street dug from my oldest phone book,
two numbers, a time and two places I can't access
otherwise, a spring of experience distilled over decades
into streams of gladness and regret.

I don't remember how we met or why we parted,
except as possibilities I can't confirm without her to say
what is true and what is not: she's from a time in my life
I can't recall on my own - self-taught as I had become
from the age of ten on - to avoid thinking too deeply
about the patterns of self destruction that I had
taken over from my father.
My shields, like dividing walls,
still separate me from who I was back then.

Only now, days afterward,
because of the age of that phone book,
do I know that I knew her in my early mid-twenties
when I was little more than an adult housing a broken child.

That is why, when I came across her name online,
and then found her photo, buried complexities suddenly
fountained into sense - but not quite sensible - memory;
her smile became visceral, then became the sound of her voice,
her eyes became her laugh, her breathing near me was felt;
my heart remembered her as my mind raced to
understand there was someone I had loved deeply
and forgotten. I messaged her to reintroduce myself,
I received a return hello,
I followed her message - with
not just one - but two of my own;
both written as poles of previously
compartmentalized love and guilt
erupted together from my
no longer divided
subconsciousness.

The emotions were those
of the young me I am now lamenting:
the two notes the older I just wrote
were driven by my need to make sense of
what was happening to me, to apologize
for a past I couldn't remember in light of feelings
for someone I am only just remembering...

To her, they must have seemed like
missives from madness.
Her response came with morning,
the fragile link was blocked,
access denied,
contact severed.

Since then,
I have a sense
of an almost certain
phone call.

My last words to her,
however,
remain beyond recall,
her response
I still cannot hear.

The gist un-knots in my gut
as strands of sorrow and joy.

Only the long practice
of self-forgiveness
for that time
of fragmentation
allows me
peace
with myself
and this outcome.

For even though I had ended it,
I had cared for her in depths
I could not reach; and thus,
some of what was,
survives
beyond
Facebook
friendships
or email.

She is no longer forgotten
and I have a few
memories back
I never meant to lose.