Have you seen me there
walking the halls filled with blue skies
and star showers
through waves of passing moments
holding your hand in mine
mimicking your smile?

Have you seen me
in the future we will live in
rushing past you
toward places that don't exist yet
in our shared conscience?

Have you seen us
meeting by chance
at a bar late at night
asking for a lighter
then looking up
to see your own eyes reflected
while easy smiles stumble in shock
and recognition?

Do I still exist
somewhere in you?

The title speaks it all so clearly, unlike I who slurs my words
To write down what a handful will see, but phrases never to be heard
From obligations to congratulations, it all starts to feel the same
How petty it is I blame everything, how I must feel ashamed

Things I said to prove a point
messages left on read I wish I never sent
The cold is blistering, so are my fingers
Tell me how you can forget yet for me it still lingers

People go on with their lives, wishing for the summer
While I sit hear wishing I didn't think everything was a ******
Its so easy to appreciate the little things in life
But so hard when you feel teardrops turning into ice

Everyone says to seek help, that it gets better as you grow
yet almost a decade later I have nothing to show
Spreading positivity, have no certainty
Of the people coming and going, who matters and who closes the curtain

Future careers, games, girls, what I fear
Further encapsulating that I barely feel like I am here
Stuck between adulthood and being a child
Stuck between a mild nature and a wild imagination

Stuck between what games to play, what role to play
Which school to pay and which job pays better
Payment is engraved in my mindset, my parents make sure of it
Little do they know I hate adult life and I am sick of it

Crushes like a giddy child, in this darned freezing weather
Is it sad I feel better alone, or I feel alone and barely any better?
How ironic my words contradict each other
but thats what we were to one each other

Am I just ranting over you, this existence, or the future?
Is this in general or has my heart finally ruptured?
This barely makes sense, and neither does this life
Play, work, pay then get a wife? Is this why samurai always held a short knife?

At fifteen, the reaper came, silent in the night,
Stealing me from youth's warm, calming delight.
****** into a world where heartbreak resides,
Where innocence withers and hope slowly dies.

No more laughter, just echoes of pain,
Sorrow's lament, a relentless refrain.
Gone are the dreams that once danced in our sight,
Replaced by storm clouds, obscuring the light.

Now, I linger by your grave,
With flowers wilted, their colors all grey.
I mourn the loss of innocence, the childhood's decay,
In the quiet, I kneel, with so much left to say.

Grief marks the end of youth, a bitter pill to swallow,
and builds a home for loneliness to wallow.

the road to hell is paved with good intentions
when do i begin to forgive myself from those i have done wrong
was i a blind youth or am i truly evil
i can only blame myself but i've only followed teen impulses
my heart is not my brain but when do i get to claim separation

can i blame it on my youth or is my youth blamed on me

When I was a child,
Watching a wayward world through a lens of wonder and possibility,
Bound to an unusual captor of bats and gloves,
Reaching towards the rest of my life,
Over the head of the life I was already living,
I fell in love.
Not with a person or an object,
Nothing but a symbol of everlasting youth.
A team,
A place,
A game,
It was baseball.
Not just the game but everything that accompanied it,
A family,
Brothers becoming brothers.
A world,
The smells of trees and rain and concession stand hotdogs,
The sounds of a ball thudding into a catcher’s mitt and cheering fans,
The tastes of early morning Starbucks and corn nuts and bubble gum,
All of it stuck between basepaths,
Sitting on a bench in a dugout,
Spilled on the seats of my father’s car.

All of these little things,
All of the memories,
Just moments passed,
Lost in the depths of my mind,
Taunting me as I wish to return to them.
Although not yet old, I am older,
Reminiscing on the good and the bad of my youth.
I can still remember the veil of paralyzing loneliness,
Pierced by the family found in my brother’s team.
I remember the tears shed as I watched my father devoting his life to that team.
Those bad times were outshined by the good,
Team dinners in faraway towns,
Sunsets over outfield scoreboards,
Driving back to hotels in the dark with the windows down and classic rock blaring.
This is the way that I grew up,
Lonely but free,
Unhappy but secure,
In love with a thing that took so much from me,
Lasting Stockholm Syndrome bleeding from my life as it was to the life that I have.
I have lost this love,
No longer experience the ups and downs that can only be described as the reality of life.
I cannot weep over this lost love,
Cannot wallow,
Knowing that this is how it must be.
I must let go,
Grow up,
Get old,
Move on away from the family I found and the world I discovered,
Life doesn’t slow until it stops,
Barreling towards a hollow canyon,
Disappearing over a cliff to be covered by fistfuls of dirt,
Watered by the tears of loved ones left behind.
I must leave my love to rest before I lay in that hollow canyon.

Why must we grow up?
Grow out of our innocence and naivety, careless inexperience?
Why must we take for granted the memories of our youth?
Where do we retrieve them when our age returns to us and we miss the forgotten beauty of the world through a child’s eyes?
I wish the softness of the summer breeze would return to me,
Find me again in my days of regret,
In the sea of sorrow following me from my youth,
Sending waves crashing over my head.
I am not yet old, not yet wise,
But still, I mourn the loss of days past,
Loss of sweet summer softness,
Of the relentless rain ruining the chances I had of forgiving my father.

I have forgiven him since.
I forgave him like I forgave myself,
Regretfully.
I often miss that swirling storm of emotions I felt,
The loneliness, the worthlessness, the heart sickness.
So young and so filled with pain, balanced only by the Children of the Sun radiating from my chest.
Views of the maple-*******, the leather-launcher, the grenade-catcher,
Smells of earth and freedom,
Sounds of gentle violence, drawn-out intellectualism,
Overwhelming my senses and filling my days.
Those memories will follow me into the reaper’s grasp,
Rest with me in my eternal cradle.
Despite the storm, the pain, the sickness,
I dream of that cradle where the memories, the bitter and the sweet, will come together in the storm,
Meet like lightning and thunder,
And follow me into peace.
I am not yet old, but I long to be,
To once again feel my love and its infinite reach.