Melting into swirls
The hot sun pressed us
Into the sand, drifting,
Nothing ever shifts
More than the footprints
Buried, neck deep
Swallowing salty air
Lungs dried and settled
Rusty, lengthy gasps
Ruined memories of dust
Nothing ever shifts
More than the light
Day to night, we end
Fighting to pretend
That footprints never change
Turn away and walk
Down the alleys of dark
Hide in the shadows
Drown on the sorrows
Kneel before what used to be
Ruined memories of dust
Nothing ever shifts
More than the footprints
Left in the old sand
That no longer reaches my heart
-------
There was once a time in my life where I would do anything for anyone. I would stand up and fight for them even if they stabbed me in the back. For me, it usually takes three backstabs and then I drop you (unless, of course, we are playing TF2, in which case, if you backstab me, I will hunt you down and kill you just the same - but that's a video game, not real life).
My friendship is like some horrible baseball game. Strike one, okay, forgiven, just get it right the next time. Strike two, okay - maybe I shouldn't have taken you back so easily, maybe I should have given us more time to reflect, but I still love you just the same. Strike three - out. Out of my life, out of my heart, forever. I'll take the memories and crumple them up and burn them in the next bonfire I attend. Little pieces of paper that hold all the thoughts of you and me together tossed away in an instant.
Recently, I felt something shift in me. It's no longer three strikes. It's not even two. It's one.
I'm still processing how I feel about this shift. Maybe someday I can talk about the situation more candidly. While I have been "mourning" what used to be and how that will never be the same again, a part of me feels free somehow. My whole life, I allowed people to stab me three times before showing them the door. And now, I have the strength, the disconnect, whatever you want to call it, to let go.
People change. The way you feel about them changes too. And sometimes I hate it, that the impressions someone makes on your heart can never be the same again. Someone once said to me, "You can never go back." Tears threatened my eyes and I refused to believe it was true. No, I told myself, my friends that I had just left behind in Boston would never change. We would always be friends.
This is the first instance where I realized how true that statement is. While I still have good memories, I can never live in those memories again. I cannot curl up in the comfort of a sing-a-long by the bonfire because those memories are false. They are real, as real as ever, but they will never happen again. You can never go back, but that's why here and now is so important. You need to continue forward, head up high, knowing that people changed you and that you changed them. Maybe you can never go back to the night that you spent staring at the stars, but you can get the stars today. You know you were happy then, and you know you are happy now, and you can wish them the same.
But you can never go back. And now that I think about it - I've changed too much to want to go back.
I still love my memories. I still love the people in them. But that's all they are - precious memories.
