Pour salt in the wounds.

It's getting worse.

The infection is spreading.

Like a cancer,

it festers and grows

polluting everything that once held meaning,

perverting everything that was once good.

Every street corner

every back alley

carries this sickness,

this disease of memory.

My hometown is overrun 

with infected memories
that I try so hard to forget
but never can. 

And like a cancer,

the only cure is to cut it out of my life

forever,
to leave this haunted city,
with its plague of phantoms
and haunted memories
and not look back.
Not even once. 

It would only pour salt in the wounds.