Sunday, May 4, 2008

My skin stings as I retreat back to its divine simplicity.

Like a lifelong dream,
a dream with only one solitary outcome in mind,
I wish to hear the motions of a life witnessed through the gaze of an engaging juvenile.

Voices of people unaffected by time,
Walk by preaching, “Say goodbye to yesterday.”
“Have no regrets, and do not look back….”
Why didn’t anyone tell me this?
Why wasn’t I told before she walked me outside to play, upon the sour patch of what was Sunny Brae Heaven?
Why wasn’t I told, as she put on my sweater those countless times?
Was it to keep me warm from the autumn fall, or sheltered from the winter ice that was yet to come?

It’s like she sang.
This used to be my childhood…

They say the best things in life are always free…
I wish my papa were here with me.

I can see your face, and all its beautiful compassion. They say you’re not a memory, but the truth is, that is all you’ll ever be to me.

Today will always be tomorrow’s yesterday.

Yesterday will always be where I felt life the best.
Yesterday will always be where I last heard my mind beat.
Yesterday will always be where I knew you loved me…

They say her spirit’s not dead, but
Yesterday will always be the only place where you could still hear her contagious laughter,
Loud, happy, and carefree to roam the kingdom of childhood…

The one place which, in Yesterday’s safe haven, remains the only realm that will never die.

"Don’t ever look back", they say.
Life is nothing but a short time to experience paradise.
Stuck in a minute, a blissful moment captured in the essence of 6 years.
A short time spent, yet with 18 years of bitter discomfort to show for it.
Melting away like ice cream cake, on a child’s hot and syrupy, June birthday.

Her voice longs to resonate in surround sound.
It simply resists the act of renouncing her motherly wisdom.
Obvious vocal attributes, reiterating...

“Don’t hold on to the past.”

The resilience of an echo, a voice muffled by tears yet survived through the crimes committed by the incomprehension of a guardian’s fatherly-bruised psyche, answers back…

“Well Mother, that’s too much to ask.”

How can one allow years of their life to past them by?
How can one believe that they have allowed life to past them by, when all they wish to live for are the exact seconds of a time that sweetly, notwithstanding its boundless anguish, in reflection has yet to pass them by?


It breathes life simultaneously.
It is every chord of the instruments that accompany the soundtrack of those charming adolescent days.
It is the random breeze felt via the car window on the corner of Parthenia and Corbin, on a Wednesday afternoon at 2:23 p.m.

It is the imagination of a young girl lying on her Grandmother’s Persian rug, entertained by the labor of string beans along with Inspector Gadget inside the once grayish house, that runs wild in her head.

It is the memory of the excitement in sharing the news that she got a 90210 calendar in 1992, and the look on her cousin’s face when she simply stated, “Honey, it’s December and 1992 is over. What are you going to do with it?”

It is the simple mind of a child. The effortless thoughts, and the somewhat profound awareness that a child attains that lead her to answer, “I’ll use it the next time it’s 1992.”


She remembers, and beneath the tears and yearning…begins to smile, as she thinks out loud,
“It was the most beautiful life I ever knew, and it was the most beautiful life anyone could have asked for. I can cry and fall deeper away from what I have become, but the ability to smile with a heart broken from a love lost, is the most profound gift I could have ever come away with. It may continue to leave me in a state of despondency, and on the verge of death as I wake up, live through the day, and lay my body down to sleep, but the constant craving of just one more minute, though it feels like someone literally cut a valley through the middle of my childhood essence and ripped the core of my being away from me, will always remain the most intense, disconcerting, terrifying, painstaking, and beautiful high of continuous longing known to man. A state of inestimable nirvana that no drug can ever produce.”


Nothing hurt, and it was all frightening.

Everything hurt, and it was simply divine…

Everyday is another yesterday that’s past.


You see, that’s the trouble with yesterday,

It will never be today or tomorrow, at least not in enough time for anyone to realize it.

…and most of all, unfortunately, not in enough time for her.