It is funny what a lock can do,
it can lock us in - or out.
A lock can keep us from impeding danger.
It can keep us from heading out into the world, a crutch.
There are many types of locks - emotional locks are the walls we put up.
We tend to these walls - these locks - we keep putting up our walls.
We build our walls, tuck-pointing and adding bricks where they need to be.
It stinks within these walls, the air is stagnant, there is no dignity in hiding.
A lock in its metallic sturdy state, in its walled and emotional state - can be broken.
It can be left unlocked too.
The wall can be knocked down.
We have to decide.
We have to choose.
Living in a moment is possible.
It can be a trip to the moon.
It can be joy.
It can be cataclysmic.
Living without locks is possible.
We have to decide for ourselves.
Let the light in and breath.

When you were here,
way back when,
I loved you.
You were distant,
always distant.
And yet, I loved you.
But now, silence.
Ten years have passed,
Eleven since I last saw you.
You came to my house, remember?
You felt the finality as much as I did.
We both knew it would be the last time.
You had a cane.
Your clothes hung on you like rags.
Your face was gray and gaunt.
I have your Cleveland Indians hat that you wore that day.
As you left, you stumbled.
Conscious of the fact that I was watching you.
And I was.
Frail and weak.
Yet, you wanted to see me.
You pulled away in your Buick Riviera.
I cried.
Our time together, tumultuous.
But you were in your prime then.
Full of life and red of face.
Smooth and calculated.
Bold.
But then, the flame flickered,
the candle melted.
The pineapple meaning "welcome" on your front door,
seemed to be lying.
I made choices.
To protect myself.
Because I couldn't watch you **** yourself.
I couldn't beg you to get help any more.
I was angry.
Angry that love wasn't enough.
I'd always heard it was.
It wasn't.
I miss you.
You were the best and the worst of my life.
I live daily remembering you.
You gave me no choice.
What a gift to give!
I wish you'd never given such a vile present.
"Is it o.k. to go to Heaven now?"
Sure.
Go.
Maybe I'll see you there.

What does it feel like?
When you hit rock bottom.
Does it hurt?
Should I be bleeding?
I do emotionally bleed.
That is to say, I am actively emotionally bleeding.
I have **** near lost almost everything.
Everyone.
That I have ever loved.
So, is this not yet rock bottom?
The surface here is gritty.
I can't reach through it.
Or above it.
It stinks here.
And I'm alone.
There are shadows of life gone by.
How do I recognize rock bottom?
Is it surreal?
Tangible?
How am I to know when I'm there?
I did hit my head on the way down,
Two or fourteen times.
I guess I will sit here.
And wait.
Looking up for the light that I'd always heard tell of.

If I hide in the closet in the far back corner,
I don't know if I would be escaping anything but the light.
I want to hide though.
I don't want people watching me.
The sense of failure is impeding fast.
I am so tired of looking sick and feeling sicker.
I used to believe that I would make a difference.
I would rise above my illnesses and write a great American novel.
But now?
Now I feel as though the world has stopped spinning for me.
As if to say, "Jump off! We don't need you anymore...."
I feel like a failure.
I wanted more -
before the sickness set in.
Before the invasion.
I want to write beautiful things.
I want to write about beautiful people doing beautiful things.
But - I don't....
I write about how I'm dying.
I write about having an addiction.
I write about how no one wants to be around me.
No wonder....
No wonder no one wants to be around me.
I have a world of dreams in my head,
But no one wants to be around the dying man.
I used to have such breathtaking dreams.
But no one will ever know.

It was in a bargain bin - an empty book of lined pages, embossed on the front in gold leaf: Journal.

This Journal -to me- could be a story, a book of poetry - a collection of thoughts and musings. It is blank and it is mine for a bargain.

Did they not see the value when they placed this in the bargain bin? It could, in the right hands, be turned into a fantasy, a love story, an epic journey.  It doesn't have to be a Journal but maybe...

I pick it up and feel the weight of it in my hands - feeling the texture of the volume, earth-tone paisley with a gold ribbon down its center.

I open it and breath in the freshness of the pages - a smell like none other.

Perhaps this volume could be a gift given to a young person - to inspire a love of writing, to appreciate what it is to have your own words in a bound book.

Or do I keep it for myself? To begin the great American novel, full of characters and plot and some tragedy. People that I create, lives that I breathe air into, hearts that I break and heal all by just writing words.

All of this from a bargain bin and I got it first.

I watched you walk away a moment ago.

Quickly.

I wasn't prepared for this moment.

The loss I feel.

The trepidation beating me down, hollowing out my heart.

Scarring my existence without the softness of death.

I must suffer in this loss, weak and frail – ****** and lost.

I dropped my head for one second – only one – so that the tears may fall.

I looked back to where you were but you were gone.  I wasn’t ready for you to be gone.  You had hurriedly turned a corner, dodged into a building and left me on the sidewalk, crumpled and distressed.

That I know of, you did not turn around to see me one last time.  Perhaps your “one last time” look came when you said you didn't love me any longer and you walked away.

So easily they fell – those words – “I don’t love you anymore.”  Yes, you said “anymore” not “any longer.”

When did that happen?  So that I may know, please?  When did I do something?  When didn't I do something?

Please let it be something because I can’t live with it if the reason was simply that I was just being me.  To think that being myself, the only person I know to be, could have driven you away. (Into the arms of another!)

Oh, is it that?!  Someone else?   I truly have lost – to someone who has no face, at least not to me.  To you, it may be the most beautiful face you have ever seen and you can’t stop wanting to be near it, to hold that face in your gruff hands and smooching it …. Over and over and over and over.

Sans the face.  Forget about it.  I need to know, where did I fail?  Please let me know.  I fear though, you will not – let me know, that is – because you all but ran away from me, to put distance between our two hearts….mine broken, yours yearning for the face of another.  The face.

There it is again.  This face that I don’t know – mocking me while I sit, sobbing, on a sidewalk – holding my coat tight around me, the cold making the snot run from my nose and down my face.  I shiver.  

I will sit a few moments more – an hour or so, a day – longer to wait for you to come back and pick me up.  You will come back, won’t you?

You have cast your shadow today,
One you cast many years ago when I was a boy,
A boy full of ideals.
Of warmth.
Of hope.
Your shadow then was for me - life.
A boy of fifteen with the heart of an old soul.
You weren't much older but by a few years.
Connected for a moment in time.
Then you were gone.
Which I understood (eventually).
But....
I thought I loved you and your shadow.
That idealism playing and pulling at those young heart strings.
How can someone love with a heart so young?
(With a soul that is old and strange.)
Now, decades later, your shadow - though distant - is here again.
Redefined.
I welcome it.
I need it now more than then.
This isn't a boy in love.
This is a man.
My body catching up to the age of my soul.
Thank you for letting me see that dreams do come true as I live vicariously through you.