Amid all the lost losses a year can bring,

happiness seems a betrayal

How dare you smile, after all?

After. All. This. Pain. 

This pain that has had to mean something,

or this year has meant nothing

Lives lost, never to be found on this side of forever

How can you smile when you can’t forget?

Where do you go to start again?

Illusions abound. I wait for them. In each and every moment, I look for them

And in many of these moments it seemed that she was one…

that she was just an illusion

For amid all the lost losses, what is there left to find?

Have we not used up all human emotion, these long days that stretch into months, as days do…

until they add up to a year, and then suddenly you look 

Eyes open now, the sky is telling you that after the last credit card is maxed out, and the last mishap of 2,021 has been added up…

Well. It tells you nothing. 

The sky is still there, and it is still beautiful, and yes there are changes. 

So many changes that you just can’t see any just by looking

Like most things, change is something you have to see by feeling…

and amid all the lost losses a year can bring

This is something I now know. 

All is never as it appears, and rarely as it is understood 

and sometimes on a clear night when the sky is extra loud with its opinions on those things lost and found and the change too excruciating to feel 

You can remember how much you will never know

And how long it took you to get here fades into insignificance, when you think of how far there is to go

For amid all the lost losses there are gifts being given 

They are different for everyone

And you will know when you get one

I cannot tell you the losses will fade, some scars are deeper than others

I cannot tell you which pieces of sky will fall today, and I cannot tell you when it will be your turn to breathe in the breath of a brand new place that is the closest feeling I know to starting over 

Until now.

Amid all the lost losses, amid all the storms, amid evil deeds and things people chalk up to things that make no sense,

This is where you will find it. 

There is beauty there, and there always will be

after all is lost 

and maybe 

even after we have lost the very definition of ourselves, 

pieces remain

The pieces that lie in wait, amid all the lost losses that make up a life…

they are different for everyone.

And you will know when you get one. 

I wish that I could travel back, sometimes

to the places of my youth

Grab the lawn chairs at least

A song or two

The Piano

The sayings that I only half rememeber now

taking on all new meanings as I replace the missing words

missing voices

missing smiles I once counted on

I wish that I could see them

here…

See them and hear them and this time I will not forget

I cannot

forget

just one. more. time.

I need assurance that they were real

All of them

All of these ghosts, the good and the bad, they are here, yes?

you see them too….

It is not also always easy to see through

The Tears

The Laughter

The Mistakes

The Stories

The Misunderstandings

Because I understand now

how time warps our roads

blurs our very best maps

clouds the eyes of mere human memory

In the meantime

I will continue to mis-quote my nanny

as I sip champagne

or Busch light

from this lawn chair

I borrowed from the neighbors.

I have no answers

and I need to stop asking

questions that make no difference and reveal nothing

life bleeds

into a tie dye mixture of all the wrong ways

staining my existence

a color I can no longer see…

that which no amount of moonlit bathing

will ever take away

in this world, I am branded

cursed

and worst of all stuck

between new risks and old hurts

and betrayal and hope

and I know that somewhere

in between

is likely what I have been searching for all these long

lost

and languished years

A tunnel bears no light, until it is too late.

My time

my chains

my self-induced persecution…

Reality wanes again

out of focus and out of practice and I mourn it

we may not cross paths again

in this life

I have no answers

and only a distant smile, likely in my imagination,

to follow

Super massive black hole loneliness

My daughter tells me, “at least you are good at it.”

One day, I will seek her wisdom.