To the past,

Years, the textured layers of time that weave into our identities – the personalities we create and those we destroy build flesh into the bones of our souls. The notes weave where we touch and meet and break apart. Whether it be you or I or you and I broken, the wounds still scar the memory and still the scars leave, not just in our skin, but in our souls, white lines of strength we never outgrow. The names are vague images of a person. I remember him. I remember many things. And though the years have caught me at times begging for the solace of forgetfulness, these things I carry inside me have in the end, this point, as the end but not the end -- become me.

Truth is the promise of there being a reason, a moral to the story that we dare not contaminate with false leads. The truth was that there are no false leads only redirection. The end has no meaning with out the journey and the journey becomes the end. Whether through love or fear or hate or regret, we learn to care or not to care. I would rather find that at this end I care. Whether it is that there is no reciprocation of such human strength as that, I care not. The point being the memory, the touch, and the ending remaining, resounding resolve that yes, love, I did, do, shall care.

At times like these, this point after the years of memory and touch left behind, I find that you are layered into my identity, like a gentle thorn that planted a rose seed in such soft flesh as you penetrated. Love, you were bitter. You were the dark taste of knowledge, carnal and painful, and I had no shield that could keep you from me. I learned. I learned what you showed me, I learned what you made me and I learned what you knew not in your ugly cages of hurt. I learned the ease of fear, and the recoil of anger that dies eventually in the strengthening of knowledge and understanding. The bond that supercedes needs and affection is that of understanding. Whether you were the wound I took or just a path I shouldn’t have took, you were the fire that tempered any such hate I could have harbored into a deeper, firmer, calmer compassion. For everything you took from me, and unknowingly, everything you gave me in return, I thank you.