I saw some patterns on the walls last night
but they were different from what I remembered,
Perhaps because they looked so organized
next to the abandoned shelf
where I saw them many times before.
I glanced down at the stack of photo albums below,
lying in wait for a tired soul to crack them open,
releasing some unforeseen prison that holds them,
exposing fractures of fallopian infrastructures
and revisit the old but familiar patterns once more.
Shifting through the fragments of what I was reminded of
I started thinking of the faint memories of people I thought I knew.
The one where we took illogical pictures backstage at the school play,
because we had already done our parts.
We pretended that we knew our lines on cue,
and the curtain was about to go down so we
laughed out loud because we were secretly enraged
at ourselves
at our parents
and at records cluttered around the dressing room.
Right then and there, we decided that we would look back
on the times we were together and cherish them,
honor them,
protect them,
and keep them from fading into darkness as if they died and we murdered them,
and I agree that nothing's more sick than when you walk into the woods
and catch a glimpse at your fleeing image reflected on the surface of the lake
just as you were about to cast the first stone and wash it all away,
bringing your tired face to a circular rippling end.
Later on, my mind considered itself akin to a phoenix and took flight right there
Right next to the old park bench, Where I sat and watched the animals frolic and scamper
and wondered why their lifespans were destined to be so much shorter than ours
and, for better or for worse, why they could live life without thinking of death,
only of survival.
That’s when I remembered everything I had planned for myself
and noticed that none of it had gone wrong
but none of it had gone right, either.
I asked you about this the next day
about immortality and increasingly rapid gazes into my past,
and you asked me if I had anything to eat
because you were hungry
so I said no and pretended I was ok, nevermind, anyway,
then I went to the soccer field and lay on the grass
filled with fresh morning dew that dropped
like tears of an unpeeled lemon
who had just lost his bitterness
and was rapidly waiting for sunset to dry him slowly.
And I thought, well,
People must have given out the wrong signs
I must have gotten some courageous idea
That maybe there was more to life than making empty canvases.
People will do anything to deconstruct their lives,
emotional problems that they make up themselves,
preventing their true meanings from ever occurring
betwixt multitudes of drawn out diagnoses.
So I picked up a pencil and drew my entire life
in one newly carved line, pointing straight
towards the other side of the paper
like all lines do.
But I was not satisfied.
It was then that I learned, erasers can make almost anything vanish
except for what actually is contained on the page,
and when I came to my senses and focused on erasing instead of drawing,
I was reminded of a dream.
An odd dream, as dreams usually are,
where I climbed up onto a sugar coated mountain
cluttered with old toys and game consoles
and demanded that my youth be returned to me by a cosmic, ethereal presence
not a deity, not a lord, but a photographic memory.
I kept repeating a phrase I used to say
in the years when I understood all that there was to understand,
until I realized that I couldn't make a dime for myself
If I didn’t pretend that I couldn’t understand anything.
With that realization, I kept on being ever present
in the right places at the wrong time,
I kept my focus on the path before me,
I kept clinging to a tether and a shadow,
And I recall how I never lowered the rope
to let anyone else scale the hills and valleys
that have already been tread on by me.
I was working on a plan that didn't involve them, I know now,
but then again, no one would even want to delegate
their affairs to a person who couldn't even
hold a rope in the proper position.
Could they have been sincere when they told me?
Over and over and over again,
that it wasn’t the time for second glances,
but I knew life wasn’t made for digital reconstructions of a fractured mirror,
and I knew that I will always see the color of someone’s eyes,
but that couldn’t mean anything to anyone
unless they could look at my face properly, honestly, clearly.
Photos will fade, lives will be lost, and boats will sail once again,
We can’t reshape ourselves,
It is clear that change becomes me,
And them, and him, and her.
And all of us, change becomes us,
who are trapped in a memory of our own past
because we wish for it to become real again.
And so the phoenix draws closer and closer
It’s flames ignited to the core,
Awaiting paradise.
