You cannot go back, to return does not mean
to rerun, I recognise these streets, I can recall
a certain laugh, a twisted lie, an open door,
but my footprints have changed. I cannot find
the same sunflower I drew when I was younger
than this youth I now cling to and so many
of those old doors have twisted and the lies
opened out to be nothing more than lessons.
I cannot go back, the streets now wear shadows
that never fell from this form I have now become.
All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
This month is about looking back in order to move on, one last nod to Paris before I part.
Damien B. Donnelly 
just beautiful….thank you for sharing.
Thank you so much for your kindness 🤗🤗
it is such a pleasure to read your poetry.
Such a good way of putting it. The person we left behind is not the same, the shadows they cast are different. Gone.
Thanks Jane. They really are different, almost unrecognized reflections
We’re like snakes sloughing skin. Can’t get back into the old one.
Love that monstrous image of humanity desperate to return to a skinnier version of itself
I wonder if snakes ever wish they’d kept their old skin?
Beautiful, Damien–words and photo. Those last two lines really sum it up.
The photo makes me think The Third Man mixed with some film about an exotic museum heist. 🙂 And of course, as we both keep quoting, “we can never go back to before.”
Thanks Merril. That lyric does always come back, as much as we can’t go back, we do try
Yes, I think that’s part of being human.