To have met a stranger
To remain strangers
You never said 'I love you'
But you made me feel you loved me too
For a stranger, you were my favorite
You always would be, I thought of it
We're so close yet lightyears apart
Thank you for making me realize I have a heart
Started as one
Back from where it has begun
A stranger who walked a path of two
And a writer who can finally bid adieu

blades of grass gather
the wind

cattails sing
of shallow rain
tremors of dragons
litter the sunlight

some carry tears
others cry away
a curl of absence
embroiled with relief

I forgive you. For the pain you inflicted, for the nights I spent crying over you. For the insecurities you gave me, for the memories you lit on fire. For the mistakes you made that I apologized for. For the friendship you turned into a nightmare. For the nights I spent up wondering what was wrong with me, why I didn't seem to feel worth much to you. For the love you gave, and then the cold shoulder that followed. For the disbelief that laid tight in my chest like a fist. For the smoke that came from your lies, choking me, making me cough up excuses for how you treated me. For the good times times you make me regret. For the talks that meant everything, but mean nothing now. For the truths I'll never be sure were lies or not. For the distrust of love and people you helped instill in me. For saying you'd always be there, and then leaving. For the fact that I still care so much for your well being and pray for your happiness, even though I know you don't care if I'm alive or dead. But most of all I forgive you because you helped me realize that in life sometimes painful things happen and we cannot stay bitter. We must move on to better things, to brighter things, to better people, to brighter people. We must move on to heal, to finally see our worth, to understand that not everyone or everything I've lost was not a loss, just a lesson. To finally know what it feels like to be free of the pain, the bitterness, the resentment, the despair. To finally feel and know peace in such a hurtful situation. I forgive you. Not even for you, but for myself, and other people like me who have felt this before, and aren't yet ready to forgive for an apology they didn't truly feel they got.

She started living for herself, finally, after years of doing what everyone else wanted.
She quit her job and her makeup routine, finally letting that beautiful face of hers breath.
She started writing more, inspiration finally found it's way back to her veins.
She was reborn, like a phoenix from ashes, and finally figured out how to be alive again.

So it finally happened.

And I'm feeling so philosophical.

So I'll drop this paragraph I'm supposed to purport Toulmin in and instead, drop a beat through pentameter that means nothing like it should.

Those words were spoken in the right order, in the right way, at the right time, when I needed to hear them most. He knew. YOU KNEW. How, I can't exactly be sure. Hell, I don't even know if your conciousness deigns to dwell in the reaches of digital activity where my poetic inner goddess reigns, but I can hope.

If you're reading this....

Tell me.

At last I see the picture,
As clouds part, the sky is clear,
The sunshine warms our inner hearts,
Finally we've found some cheer.

I have not felt this happy in years, thank you

Have you ever felt like a child in the dark?
Where the whispers become thunder and the gods pound in your heart?
There's no sense in trying to quiet the storm
All that can be done is to embrace it with both arms

I feel like a traveller stumbling on a chest
Filled with something familiar but I can't quite place it yet
I found a picture lying in the dirt
As my mind was turned on by the velvet colored shirt

Some time ago, when my hair reached my eyes
I recall a quick visit that seemed to disappear and die
No matter how hard I try to remember
I can't come up with reasons I gave up that cold September

Now, as time's gone by, and things have changed
Like the inflections of my voice and memories estranged
I hear a voice from many Septembers ago
Like a harmony so rich that I can't wait to know

two years ago i sat alone on the other side of the lake
(on the wrong side of the right province)
and i wrote about what could have been.

i didn't like it there
(no matter how many times i said i did)
and i waited and wished and wanted and wondered

if the lake would freeze over enough to stand on
(if i would stop freezing up enough to take the first step)
if you would even be willing to head towards the hallways and highways and holidays where time was frozen and all we knew was us

and meet me in the middle of what could be
(present tense, i see that now)
for maybe more than a little bit longer

yesterday i sat on the right side of that huge stretch of water
(with you it went from isolating to intimate)
and i did not write because being beside you was already beyond my most clever metaphors

i love it here
(i mean that, truly)
and after too many seasons and cinder blocks and blurry skype calls

this is finally ours
(this was ours the entire time)
for far, far more than a little bit longer