time..
as i follow through the awkward movements of moving forward
i am suddenly summoned back
to the time when things were intact-
a little-
or perhaps more than they were thereafter.
i am reckoned by the mail i received
and the message shortly beforehand
and then again by the introductions that came many years and lifetimes after.
loudly they call my name which i recognize in the formalized spelling and swift emails.
i miss you all i think to myself
and then again i don't.
the faces and places that we shared remind me that life has moved forward
that life has carried on with and without the ones i have loved.
i am contemplating returning.
to those very places that wounded me.
words said by a big brother
darkness and ill intent all live in those places
in that state
that i was resigned to grow up in.
in one way or another
i want to return,
says the woman i am now.
i never want to return,
says the memories of the child that still resides in my bones, done growing and getting older.
i have memories
and some are not pretty.
some moved me up in the experiences i shared,
the loves i found,
and the stones i turned without direction.
in those places i have friends
some who never knew
some who had their own stories
i never asked to know.
still, we ask and we crave to see those faces that knew us when we were young
and presumably innocent.
i crave those faces
for reasons that have nothing to do with my place and my knowing in the world,
pushed further along in the worldly experience than i had a right to know back then.
i crave those faces because they set me up to return to a place where love lived.
and that is enough to release the unreconciled child in me.
