Melancholy Descriptions of Lost Paradise

I saw some patterns on the walls last night

but they were different from what I remembered,

Perhaps because they looked so organized

next to the abandoned shelf

where I saw them many times before.

I glanced down at the stack of photo albums below,

lying in wait for a tired soul to crack them open,

releasing some unforeseen prison that holds them,

exposing fractures of fallopian infrastructures

and revisit the old but familiar patterns once more.

Shifting through the fragments of what I was reminded of 

I started thinking of the faint memories of people I thought I knew.

The one where we took illogical pictures backstage at the school play,

because we had already done our parts.

We pretended that we knew our lines on cue,

and the curtain was about to go down so we

laughed out loud because we were secretly enraged

at ourselves

at our parents

and at records cluttered around the dressing room.

Right then and there, we decided that we would look back 

on the times we were together and cherish them,

honor them,

protect them,

and keep them from fading into darkness as if they died and we murdered them,

and I agree that nothing's more sick than when you walk into the woods

and catch a glimpse at your fleeing image reflected on the surface of the lake

just as you were about to cast the first stone and wash it all away,

bringing your tired face to a circular rippling end.

Later on, my mind considered itself akin to a phoenix and took flight right there

Right next to the old park bench, Where I sat and watched the animals frolic and scamper

and wondered why their lifespans were destined to be so much shorter than ours

and, for better or for worse, why they could live life without thinking of death,

only of survival.

That’s when I remembered everything I had planned for myself

and noticed that none of it had gone wrong

but none of it had gone right, either.

I asked you about this the next day

about immortality and increasingly rapid gazes into my past,

and you asked me if I had anything to eat

because you were hungry

so I said no and pretended I was ok, nevermind, anyway,

then I went to the soccer field and lay on the grass

filled with fresh morning dew that dropped

like tears of an unpeeled lemon

who had just lost his bitterness

and was rapidly waiting for sunset to dry him slowly.

And I thought, well,

People must have given out the wrong signs

I must have gotten some courageous idea

That maybe there was more to life than making empty canvases.

People will do anything to deconstruct their lives,

emotional problems that they make up themselves,

preventing their true meanings from ever occurring

betwixt multitudes of drawn out diagnoses.

So I picked up a pencil and drew my entire life

in one newly carved line, pointing straight

towards the other side of the paper

like all lines do.

But I was not satisfied.

It was then that I learned, erasers can make almost anything vanish

except for what actually is contained on the page,

and when I came to my senses and focused on erasing instead of drawing,

I was reminded of a dream.

An odd dream, as dreams usually are,

where I climbed up onto a sugar coated mountain

cluttered with old toys and game consoles 

and demanded that my youth be returned to me by a cosmic, ethereal presence

not a deity, not a lord, but a photographic memory.

I kept repeating a phrase I used to say

in the years when I understood all that there was to understand,

until I realized that I couldn't make a dime for myself

If I didn’t pretend that I couldn’t understand anything.

With that realization, I kept on being ever present

in the right places at the wrong time,

I kept my focus on the path before me,

I kept clinging to a tether and a shadow,

And I recall how I never lowered the rope

to let anyone else scale the hills and valleys

that have already been tread on by me.

I was working on a plan that didn't involve them, I know now,

but then again, no one would even want to delegate

their affairs to a person who couldn't even 

hold a rope in the proper position.

Could they have been sincere when they told me?

Over and over and over again,

that it wasn’t the time for second glances,

but I knew life wasn’t made for digital reconstructions of a fractured mirror,

and I knew that I will always see the color of someone’s eyes,

but that couldn’t mean anything to anyone

unless they could look at my face properly, honestly, clearly.

Photos will fade, lives will be lost, and boats will sail once again,

We can’t reshape ourselves,

It is clear that change becomes me,

And them, and him, and her.

And all of us, change becomes us,

who are trapped in a memory of our own past

because we wish for it to become real again.

And so the phoenix draws closer and closer

It’s flames ignited to the core,

Awaiting paradise.