I never left you behind

You are old and dusty,

and rusting in the distant past,

grey and cobwebbed

in the backstory,

adjusted by the sepia romance

of time’s manipulation.

Like a well remembered dog

you creep up in the silent moments

and rub against me

with remembrance,

a ghost of reality.

Triggered by a passing aroma

of grease in some other workshop,

or a spark of welding arc,

half remembered jokes

and the phantom laugh of long gone friends,

you explode, or leap from the shadows.

Then, as if recalled by a manufacturing fault,

you are gone from my grasp

into that shade of your birth

and wait for the fuse to burn again.

Silent again, in the dumb deafness of now

I never left you behind

for you were in the making

with your clamour and noise

and the taste of oil.