26

I traveled through the spaces of my previous corridors,  
touching memories as they glisten past,  
little glass ornaments reflecting the many faces  
of when I thought days would have no expiration  
and the sensations were too eternal to be a memory  
 
The fragment I choose, a decade earlier:  
I enter the room of a distant yet present Self,  
watching your slender fingers skating elegantly  
across a frozen pond of letters, as if locking in  
your emotions with a spell of frigid literature  
 
Yearning yet calculated, crafted to be beautiful,  
yet still disconnected from the underlying meaning  
of the whispered gold slipping from your mind  
into your hands, in the hopes of making any sense  
of the crippled, lonely beating in your steely chest  
 
I remember the ache, I remember the longing,  
furious in the pursuit for catharsis and clarity,  
blinded by the dark of what I mistook as idealism  
crafting written realities both of my own,  
and of what I wished could be my own  
 
Lines blurred,  
hearts broken,  
nights lost,  

but  

lines written,  
pages filled,  
longing fulfilled  
yet not  
 
I visit and recall and admire,  
feeling pride with y(our) prowess,  
yet I leave you behind to grow  
as I await you in the present  
when your honesty outgrows your desire  
for the perfect phrase,  
 
and we continue to grow  
together.