Water is running,
Running dry
And I am
Running swiftly
Down long-deserted streets
To long-forgotten houses
With chipped paint and
Dusty woodwork
Where our childhood memories
Lay strewn in the scorched, dead grass
Like toys that had been
Carelessly cast aside there
So very long ago.

This is not a place,
It is many:

All images of what a home
Should have been,
But wasn't;
What youth should have meant,
But didn't.
The empty bottles from
Who-knows-where
Are piling up behind the brambles in the
Corner of what was once a yard,
And empty promises from
Someone in
A black and white photograph
Are piling up in the
Corner of what was once a heart—

Mine, I believe.

Waiting for the sun to rise
And never set again
Is more tedious than what is believable,
And still I find part of myself waiting,
Left behind in the arms of all the
Trees I've ever climbed
And fallen asleep in.

There was a tow-headed little girl
Running through the streets,
Dragging stray cats out of the gutter
And bringing them home for her
Mama to find.
She was laying in the summer sun,
Matting down the grass until
There was a shallow, child-sized
Indentation on the ground,
And she spent hours making chains of
Clover blossoms to be tossed
Into the grass, forsaken by the
End of the day.
She was always alone—

Always alone.

I watch her every second I spend
Drowning in time
In the lower half of an hourglass.
Where would she be now
If things had been different,
If things had been better,
If things had not fallen apart.
Everything is broken now,
And blame has been tossed around
Mended then shattered again
And we're running out of superglue.

Adults become children
And children have adulthood
Prematurely imposed upon them
Because crisis makes people
Both strong and weak,
Serious yet emotional,
Bold yet
So very small and frightened
Of the world around them
And the chaos that rends the cloth
Of our lives and leaves it in
Tattered ribbons
While similar scars
Decorate pale youthful skin like
The battle wounds of veteran soldiers
And the mental wounds
No one can perceive
This is the answer,
The reason,
But not the remedy.
This is the source.

What should have been happy memories
Are tinted with anguish
Like a film of dirt on the glass
Of an old picture frame
Containing images
That are growing startlingly unfamiliar.