Imprints

That recipe I make

Slow-cooked lamb roast

Infused with lemon and garlic

Splashed lavishly with olive oil,

I kept that when I broke up

With the dark-haired man

With deep-brown eyes

His love of Korean cinema lingered

Long after he was gone

And I'll never eat Romano

And not think of him

Sometimes fondly

Sometimes with a deep pain

He left many imprints on my life

From my French sailor

Who forever made me see

The romance in a sunset

Sometimes I hum that song

The one he used to sing to me

When everything was closing in

And I found it hard to breathe

Every bike ride or playground

Reminds me of that summer

Where we frolicked

Hands intertwined

In the heady, fragrant breeze

Eyes only for each other

He's in every sunset now

I can't eat donuts

Without remembering

Those ones I ate in Berlin

In the freezing winter wind

With my German lover

His coat wrapped around me

As he kissed the sugar from my face

And when I walk in cemeteries

I think of when we strolled

Hand-in-hand through that place

Sombre and yet beautiful

The autumn leaves swirling

On the hibernating ground

I see him still betwixt the headstones

They shaped me with their taste

Their passion, their dislikes

And though these men are gone

Their impression here remains

And oft I ponder to myself

What habits linger still

That they have kept from me