Anthems

Hi, I'm just someone who writes a lot about things that have happened to them - this is all going in a book one day - There's always another 'you' somewhere in my story. 'You' being the people who appear in my happiest moments. 'You' being the people who caused me pain.

[echofromourpast]

There’s always a ‘you’ somewhere in my story. ‘You’ being the people who appear in my happiest memories. ‘You’ being the people who caused me pain. 

I suppose what I’m trying to say is that this will be a collection of those memories. The good, the not so good, and everything in between.

[eptck]

you have to be kinder to people with memory issues.

you have to be kinder to people who are slow processors.

you have to be kinder to people who don't understand your jokes.

you have to be kinder to people who forget important dates.

you have to be kinder to people with cognitive decline.

you have to be kinder to people who were always this way, too.

you have to be kind. you have to be kind.

[echofromourpast]

At 11:11 we all had our wishes

Please stay,

Just a little longer,

Come back

Yet you were whisked away. Taken by an early summer breeze to somewhere we can't reach.

To somewhere you can breathe easy,

To somewhere you can be free.

[echofromourpast]

My love,

When the universe finally calls us to the next part of our journey I hope it will be kind enough to let our paths cross again. I think it would only be right for this love of ours to transcend this single lifetime.

If I'm lucky, we'll get to call it an eternity.

If I'm not...

Well, at least I have it this once.

[echofromourpast]

I can see it from the corner of my eye while I'm driving and you're sitting beside me, playing the part of my personal DJ. I see your mouth open but not a single sound comes out before it closes again.

My heart drops.

Because someone told you that your voice wasn't good enough. They told you that so many times until finally you believed it.

I am left to wonder who had that much power over you

And who gave them the right to steal your voice?

To steal your joy.

And I will sit here and hope that one day when that song comes on the radio

You'll sing.

[echofromourpast]

Do you think the morningstar was truly in the wrong?

Perhaps they were raised to take the fall along.

Were they the first sacrifice God was willing to make?

Did he shove them from the Heavens,

Force their shoulders to carry the weight

Of every burden he brought on himself,

Of all the flaws, his mistakes that he refused to face.

Did Lucifer do something wrong,

Or were they the easiest one to blame?

[echofromourpast]

It's no big deal.

Really, it's no big deal.

Not when there feels like there's a gaping hole in my chest,

Nor when I cry until my lungs feel ready to collapse.

It's no big deal that you helped raise me into the man I am today, only to shut me out because I am not the woman you imagined I would be.

It doesn't hurt.

It doesn't.

Not when I hear about births, deaths, and reunions from a distance, a screenshot of a Facebook post forwarded my way.

Not when I think about my nieces and nephews who will one day question where I went and why I did not say goodbye.

Not at all.

So it's no big deal,

It doesn't hurt,

Really.

[echofromourpast]

I am not only your 2am on a Saturday every few months. A drunk message sent to the only person you say will shoulder your sorrows when it feels as if your life is slipping through your grasp like sand through your fingers

If I cannot be your 2pm in the sun, when laughter bubbles from your lips and your life is finally falling together again like pieces of a puzzle.

I do not want to be either.

I am not just bitter words that you can throw like daggers. Hoping they won't find their way to embed in my back so you can still say you love me to my face.

You don't love me.

That's okay.

And maybe I love you still, but that doesn't mean that I can be just a piece of a heart you hold. If you can not return the favor, someone else will appreciate this heart of gold.

[echofromourpast]

Some writing from my sketchbook, was looking through and found it.

[echofromourpast]

It's kinda funny

Or maybe it isn't.

I spent so much of my youth altering who I was to be someone that you wanted around and not once did I stop and see the truth.

I was so scared of you abandoning me that I didn't see that I was abandoning myself. Whoever that person could have been is gone, wiped from existence by a child struggling to gain your approval. Your love.

... Now you're gone...

And all that's left for me is the stranger in the mirror.

[echofromourpast]

It is not fair that I will spend my entire life wondering how.  How can I be a better son?  When I can’t even be a good son  Because you look at me and you say daughter. 

[echofromourpast]

Landlocked

I’ve been gone for so long that I’ve almost forgotten How it felt when you rushed up to greet me How easily you could pull me in.  Oh, I could spend hours there  With no sense of direction,  Lost without a care in the world. 

I’ve been gone for so long that I’ve almost forgotten How you’d wash over me. The sound of your voice is carried on the breeze  Whispering, Beckoning,  “Return to me”  “Return to the sea.”

[echofromourpast]

Heroes Fade

I used to believe you were a hero, invincible.  There was nothing in this world that could harm you, that could take you away. 

I was a child then, whose biggest fears were the monsters under the bed. Whose biggest problems you helped face.

I still believe you were a hero, just painfully mortal.  And there are many things in this world that harmed you, that took you away.

As an adult, my biggest fear has come to stay. My biggest problem, faced alone, is that heroes fade. 

[echofromourpast]

Our Youth

Sometimes I wonder; where did our youth go? And why couldn’t we go with it? Late nights spent on the trampoline in your yard will always be among my favorite moments. The way we passed a soda back and forth and talked about everything under the stars until the early morning light. We’d fall asleep there, under the piles of blankets and pillows we dragged from inside your home. Safe from the dew that would set in around us. We never did get a lot of sleep those nights but I wouldn’t change it for the world. It was just you and I against the world those nights. On other nights we’d go on walks. Your mother, you, my little brother, and I. Maybe some other neighborhood kids would join, maybe not. We’d always get into so much trouble- but the good kind, y’know? Through the cotton fields, into the woods, down by the river. There was nowhere we hadn’t walked. We swore we knew where we were going but more often than not we’d lose ourselves in those wood. We’d also find ourselves, though. In some weird spiritual sense. Our time together always seemed so fun to me. Or maybe my memories are all through rose-colored lenses. We drifted apart in the end. Some truths spilled and the hurt was a little too much for me to handle. I could never understand why you would do what you did. You married in the following years, though we were still children, and I wonder if maybe that was the end of our youth?