What Becomes of First Love

You became a story I tell, a distant memory I pull out on occasion,

a footnote in the grand scheme of things,

and I do not remember now when the switch flipped off,

when I embedded you permanently in the past.

I became one of your drunk ramblings, a complaint you pull out over beers in your living room,

a grievance you never got over,

and I hear retellings from old friends every once in a while,

when I slip back into old dynamics for an hour or two on a trip back home.

We became proof I can get through an ending, can push through the grief,

a box of memories left behind in Ohio,

and I am happy now to have left them all behind.