I found a box full of sound,
In the silence I heard it sing in my mind,
Your memory gave me a lot to hum about,
I will play for you something from my heart.

You will not leave me.

This isn't a statement of confidence.
Believe me when I say my faith in you,
Wavers every day.
When I say you will not leave me,
This is what I mean-

Twice a day you will look at the time and wish you hadn't.

Wood chips will now be more than splinters to you.

Station wagons will drive not only to places real, but they will drive you insane.

Record stores will be graveyards, hosting tombstone after tombstone of vinyl records.

You will not leave me, because even if you do, I will not leave you.

I am a tree
Whose roots have smuggled their way into the sediments of your life.
I have grown too tall for you to up-root me now.

And her presence will not
Fill the voids left by me;
I am not dirt, meant to
Fill the holes you dig.
We are puzzle pieces
and we fit where
We belong and

She does not belong in
the same space as I do.

If you leave,
I will not want you back.
If you leave
I would want you to
let me be to deal
with my own doings please.

I have loved you
Even as you left me.
I have stayed
I have watched
You, drift to and from me
Like the sea to the shore.
My involvement with
You, has been relentless.

What you don't realize is that
I have loved you with a rigor
Thicker than my head.
But

You will not leave me, because even if you do, I will not leave you.

I finally did it today.
Tired,
Out of breath,
Ready to collapse,
But I finished.

I've always trailed behind everyone.

But at points in which I wanted to give up,
You told me to keep going.
Stay strong.
Build endurance.
Fight and win.

I trusted you and kept you in a special place in my heart,
Whenever I struggled, I looked for those words of inspiration,
Of Hope.

Then a fight happened,
You insulted me,
Told me I could never do it,
You destroyed my pride,
Made me humble.

Did I cry? No.
Did I give up? No.
Was I furious? Yes.

How ironic.

At the finish line my friends congratulated me,
the coach gave me a pat on the back,
but you weren't there.

How weird,
In the end the one thing that kept me running.
Was the pride you helped me build and destroy.

How ironic

After everything, I only have one thing to say to you.
You built everything and destroyed it,
You assaulted not only my pride, but myself.
Then you left...

But when you left, you left me something.
You left me a blueprint and a message.
The message: You are on your own now.
The blueprint, a blueprint to self training and self reliance.

You showed my humility,
You showed the true state I was in,
You showed me who I truly was,
but you also showed me my potential.

I built on that knowledge,
and with the blueprint,
I rebuilt myself and who I am.

It is ironic.
Because at the end,
The logical thing for me to remain mad.
The logical thing for me is to hate you.
The logical thing for me is to despise you.

But it is ironic.

Because at the end,
On this hill,
Staring into the sunset,
As sweat dripped down my face,
As my heart began to calm,
As my lungs began to quieten,
As the cool winds blew past me,
On the Hill of my Victory.

At the end I only have one thing to say.

Thank You.

Thank You,
with all my honesty and integrity,
I thank you for doing what you did to me.

If you hadn't I would've never been where I am now.

So at the end,
although it is logical for me to be angry, to hate, to despise.
I nevertheless thank you.