If you can keep your head when all about you
  Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
  But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
  Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
  And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
  If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
  And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
  Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
  And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
  And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
  And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
  To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
  Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
  Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
  If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
  With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
  And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

you walked through the fire
& lived to tell the tale—
but now,
the smoke
still clings to your lungs,
& every breath feels
like a battle
you never asked to fight.

There is a hole in my heart,
Right where you used to be—
A you-shaped emptiness,
And it ****** hurts.

But don’t worry,
I’ll take care of that hole,
And when you’re ready – I hope you’ll be ready –
My heart will still be here, waiting for you.

I’ll endure this sharp suffering,
The physical pain of your leaving.
Nobody warned me it would hurt this much.
But it will all be worth it if you come back.

And if you return,
You can make my heart,
With its you-shaped hole,
whole again.

You walk backwards from the setting sun,
barefoot in the fading gold,
watching light dissolve to dusk,
no secrets left untold.

The evening wind plays with your hair,
soft as whispers never said.
I watch you moving through the light,
with every step I too tread.

The golden glow clings to your skin,
paints you in its embered hue,
a fleeting masterpiece of fire,
Your beauty bathed in red-shifting blue.

I love you in this quiet hour,
when day and night stand hand in hand.
As you walk backwards from the light,
And I watch you from where I stand.