Night

As evening spreads her cloak of purple black,
the old men fill their shuls
dovening and muttering,
their coarse white beards punctuating the guttural tones.

The longer the light stretches out
the more it brings me back...
to a place that seems more like a scene from a movie
than something I actually experienced.
A pure essence of simplicity,
of early bed times and structured days,
of laughing and a sense of belonging.

The loons that float on Crescent
are the siren song that sends me into slumber...
As I dream of those simpler times
when I had a place in the world
before the current holding pattern
between the child I was and the adult I need to become.
Regressing at the start of a new life is stifling.
I seek answers...
I drink to quiet the voices in my head,
spinning faster than dervishes,
asking questions I cannot answer
and driving me mad with insecurities.

If I could go back,
I would relive each moment
and stretch each day out until the seams begin to tear.
Each day as sweet as the last...

But at the end of it all,
I'd still be alone with my memories.

My memories make me cry,
reminding me that time is borrowed.
The moment ends as the sun sets,
closing the chapter far too soon.

It's hard to separate the fiction of memory from fact,
and it's easy to see a perfect past when your present isn't.

With the canvas of the sky stretched above me
I can see the stars.
And if I listen closely I can hear trees rustling in the wind,
the crunch of gravel under foot.
The twinkling lights on reflected on the water
blur the line between then and now.

The stillness of night surrounds me
as I wait to greet tomorrow and whatever it shall bring...