When was the last time I came here?
I can't remember the last time I needed this place.
And then all these images, memories, flooded through me.
I remembered everything that had happened in my past
that might have changed who I became.
Every sad, cynical moment,
whether it be a tragedy on TV
or a revelation from my own experience.
And all the incredible beauty I had seen in my short life.
Every time I'd come here last,
I'd come with a sad and lonely, afraid and anxious, numb and brooding mind.

Here I was in the woods, the way they had been for so long,
once-delicate leaves compacted into gray, crunching masses
on the trodden dirt
and rusted, crumpled cans
marking the slow death of the place I'd always treasured.
I sat down hard, saturating my worn black jeans
with the tired old mud of this sad place,
and sifted through the dead leaves
for some of that beauty that was my faintest memory.
There was none.
It was almost as if my mind had created that memory on its own...
And of course that's what had happened.
I'd always been good at imagining and wishing.
How sad to think that now imagining is all I'll be able to do.