I’ve been going down
all the roads I’ve gone before
now the miles ride buttery
with the new asphalt
laid over the toll
the wounds took
and the surface
once broken
now seamless
yet I remember them well
the circles I’ve closed
while I hung on a cross
sacrificing everything
from the years in between
the space and the distance
measuring the aches and the bends
and the pain that seemed
to never end and yet

here I am
completely different
though nothing’s changed
just a bunch of events
priorities entrenched
and time passed to mend
in an instant I remember
me then
as if lives ago
in the sequence growing
the taste of hope
how it felt to dream
of something out there

another serial lover
I migrate north with each
new shared space
seeking comfort and strength
following the north wind
calling out my inner kid
with a sense of wistfulness
that I still haven’t found
a place I feel at home in

What I sought so extensively
I didn’t find
to be honest I don’t miss it
the search or the dread
still
it makes me sad
to think back on how it’s all behind
like I lost a friend
the shadows of all my former
Selves

We all moved along with life
the children behind our eyes
got tucked just a little deeper
grown on the edge
of experience and trauma
here
I go driving down the roads
the highways of my old
rebellious days
now tempered
my sight rooted
in wiser ways

I came up through
the mud
purity burst from the bud
the lotus is born
and I marvel scaling the range
of my feelings surfacing
bitter to sweet contrasting
how smooth the ride is
as if all that turmoil
and the “big-dealing” everything
and its immediacy
never mattered one bit
like I was asleep to it

Objective truth
means things happen
with or without you
and I wonder how long it’s been
in fact, a waking doubt
shakes the proud
usual “taking-for-granted”
secure part of me
it creeps in the curves
of all the turns I follow
like the gaps in the reflective stops
skid alerts that I’m drifting lanes
etched in the black
shining back at me
it whispers a shiver
down my core belief
that I know something
and questions credibly

Have I ever really lived?