I Seldom Say Goodbye
Years later, maybe. Too late.
Friends are fewer. I don’t have to spend so much time neglecting them.
Anything I could say to those who might have needed me is too little, too late. Many of them came and went with the seasons. The trick with autumn is letting it lie where it falls.
I must pick myself up whenever a friend passes or may have stumbled into Heaven amid the yellow leaves.
Love comes out of the shadows. So many friends were just entries in my diary, laughable and sad to some. But no one dies from a lack of love, only from being unable to show it.
When I think of love, I wish I had perfected the idea and been satisfied forever. I know that I have never missed the greatest of loves, only brushing aside one memory for another.
So, for all the years added up, I know that nothing waits. It’s not the will to live that’s important — re-living what is old is the trick. I’m finally living in a place that needs no long reach backwards, no trying to pull love through the rabbit hole of times gone.
But love was never meant to be pulled forward; it was only meant to give back.
Happy days have come. Sadness, left with the shadows, grows softer when looking backwards. Memories have finally gone back to yesterday or past lives.
Age has not made me a more agreeable man, only less demanding. No matter what despair, loneliness, or beauty kept me from moving forward, I always got back home to safety.
I don’t fear the night sky, only the empty shoreline, the clock unwinding, or the love left across the street.
I know I won’t pick up or return that call when it comes.
I’m sorry.
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