This is only the bittersweet stepping away from the
childhood that never leaves us. The hoarding of memories stored up for the
winter that we’ll feel inside our bones. It feels complete and yet unfinished.
That is to say, as though it may have turned out better last time. Your words
to me now fall upon deaf ears, so tired of hearing all you’ve had to say. But
I’ll remember you in shadows. Tell my daughter how you used to make me smile.
There’s a place for friends forgotten, the misplaced entities that had so
warmed our hearts. Have we forgotten one another? Consumed by willed and forced
amnesia; a breaking of the glass that once held all we’d caused each other to
become.
There is a wildness to the future. Wandering through woods
of barren trees. The path unending, bending back upon itself. The light ahead
unfiltered, getting brighter, washing out the patterns we can’t see. Move
ahead, they whisper from the Somewhere. Walk on and don’t look back and just
let go. Have I told you that sometimes I really think I hear them calling? All
these voices from the past, the haunted loss and longing fears. I hope to be a
part of all of Someday, because I know it’s made of up these things: of papered
skin and wrinkles, pin-curled hair that holds a color once its own, reflections
of the moon upon the water, of lights that twinkle there and in bright eyes that
shine in windblown darkness, of planted trees, of strings made up of popcorn
and red berries, climbing branches and initials carved forever-never seen. In
my own dreams of starlight waits a magic of a hope not yet grown old.
And then I wake, remember, and walk on.
