Generic

I live in the past 
it is my playground 
digging up the bones 
white dried fragile 
disintegrating to dust 
of broken love affairs 
once coursing with life 
now in death crumbling 
as they did while alive 
carefully extracting them 
from the muck 
in which they are buried 
laying them out to dry 
carrying them to a museum 
where they will be displayed 
as further evidence of 
the failure of body and soul 
and of my work as archaeologist 
of skeletons and hearts 
that no loner live.

The Archaeologist