Love in a nameless town

My memories of you are all mundane,
They are of trite days,
And banal nights.

Sometimes I wish
I had to savor,
Memories of seeing the setting sun
In your eyes,
Reciting poetry while sipping wine,
With waves singing a lullaby,
Somewhere on the riviera.

Instead I have,
Moments stolen
From sweaty summer afternoons,
Conversations left unsaid
In a hurry to reach home,
Before glances turned suspicious,
And questions followed.
Of smiles shared,
Away from the prying eyes
Of accusing houses,
Letters and flowers,
Slipped in the pages of borrowed books.
A single kiss in three years,
If brushing lips in tearing haste,
With eyes pinned to the door,
Qualifies as one.

I have memories of a bourgeois romance,
Stifled by the middle-class concerns
Of a small, miserly town,
A town where love was a blasphemy,
And morality a cross
To which emotions were nailed always.
A heartless town with small minds,
And smaller dreams.

I return to it often,
Though a lifetime has gone by,
To hear the hushed whispers of a love,
That still breathes through its tomb
Of dusty lanes and petty houses,
As I try to convince myself yet again,
That for the death of our love,
It was the town to blame,
And nothing else.