For those who have lost

Every day, faces pass us by in a whirl of different shapes and colors and size.
The eyes of some meet yours for a moment and pass by,
The eyes of others have met yours countless times.
Some moments we ponder, memorize or sometimes even forget.

Though frozen in time are hundreds of snapshots, pictures and memories
There to remember for us.
Smiling faces all laughing along to a joke or a story that has
Long since vanished into silence.

But the joy remains imprinted on paper,
Behind the glass hung on our walls.
Precious people who’ve left us behind in this fleeting reality
Still hold our hands, kiss our cheeks, share a smile in those
Framed and trimmed photographs, those moments, those memories.

These people, these moments, these pieces of our hearts,
of our history, of ourselves are with us always
Hanging on walls, propped up on desks, tucked inside wallets…
Carried for a moment in a passing glace
Carried for years in a shining summer
Carried forever when they are in your heart.

(C) MJC 2010

Rain

Life is strange. It's beautiful but it's frightening. It's so easy sometimes and yet so difficult. It's psychological and biological but doesn't make any logical sense whatsoever. I have wonderful new friends. It's a bit wearisome sometimes making new friends. Trying to remember which bits about yourself they do know, which parts they don't. Telling stories you've told a million times over to others again to these new comers to your life so that they may know something about you. Constantly having to explain why you're a 26 year old undergraduate to every single person who asks because "it's just not how it's done over here." Aching a little from losing the relationships you formed in an online community because you withdrew into the physical world.
I could write volumes about what my new friends don't know about me. But they like me anyway. So, really, what are relationships? If it's not about knowing my past and I have no idea what lies ahead in my future...are they really just about the here and now? So that begs the question: Who am I now? Now, in this moment in my relationship with these people, who am I and who are they? Because we're headed into the future together.
I desperately need a moment to just be. I need a long, deep conversation with someone that isn't about today or what I did but is about intangibles and nonrealities. Is about all the bull that doesn't matter but really does matter like what's the meaning of it all, what's the purpose, who are we?
I need to not have to write volumes about what my friends don't know about me. I just want them to know me. But then you could always ask, "Why? Why do you want them to know you?" I always end up going away. We all do. We all end up going away. And in the end maybe that's why no one knows me. But if they wanted to, I'd let them in anyway.