Memories of self.

I look at the old naive photos.

Study them intently.

And I realize something profound.

I know all of the things that you were are the things 

that you always will be.

Your hair is frozen in the frizzy locks that you didn't care to change.

Your face free of the physical photoshop of the morning.

Small as a mouse, thin as a line.

These are things that you will always.

You will always be perfect, always be beautiful.

Forever a sweet fifteen, sweeter than you ever were.

You made things clear, I feel as though I owe you so much more.

My tiny slice of Earth was just not the place for you. 

A tiny piece of me that I didn't know that I let slip 

will flow with you like my tears when I know that you won't be coming back.

It feels as though I knew you more than the doors that you put up.

It's coming into focus that since I can't become the detatched 

automaton that I want to be, 

I will spend my months mourning.

Knowing that as I turn corners and grow up, you won't be there. 

I'm glad that I got the five fleeting seconds before I had to let you go.

In those gentle five seconds I learned more about myself,

and the power that your silence held as a fog.

It hurts to know that you're so frozen. 

I think about you all the time though you're still here.

But the knowledge that I know you'll go pains me more than you. 

I understand why I can't call for you anymore.

I know that when you're gone,

you'll move onto beautiful fields of all of your many loves. 

I will remember all of the laughs, sobs and "oh well's" that

you came with when you were a new toy fresh from the box. 

Now giving you up to the world is hard like a little child,

clinging to ther mother's legs on the first day of school.

She cried after I was gone I know.

One of the hardest life processes is coming to life,

departure and acceptance.

I can't bottle down the emotions because I know that there are too many.

I wish that some people that you love could move at the same pace.

But, if you taught me anything in the time that I left myself open to you, it was that

the key to truly loving another person is not by simply letting them go-

it is allowing them to move on and put a little piece of you to the side, knowing that 

it's one piece and you'll have more after you heal, but it will forever be theirs. 

The impact that you had on me was seamlessely invisible,

but that's only because I know that not all of me is yours anymore. 

I am mine, as you are yours because I know that you must go on with your show.

My little slice of Earth will have the slightest quake in your absence,

but I know that when there's a gap in a river, water closes right over.

Goodbye to the future you, 

let wisdom light your path and

let an angels wings guide you to wherever it is that you need to go. 

For now, I will be my own.

Human Dignity + Compassion = Peace.