And I have dawned these great dark seas and jungles before
They have long come for me. I have twisted in their wrath and shook in their cold as the sweat of their toxins ran down my brow
You who seeks to protect me while destroying me, what are you truly seeking?
For your paranoia has made you a fool. A tyrant, yeast in its palm.
Calling yourself holy while riddled with holes seeping poison.
I am the keeper of this forest of green. My winds are strong, the brown of my dirt is beastly, and the shake of my ground is earth shattering.
So, who are you to call upon my land? You bring your dented sword to fight the poachers while simultaneously leading them straight to my centers.
Sometimes you want so much to be the keeper, to be the wrath of good, to be the honest gallant, but find that while fighting these hard battles and stepping with agony through each field, that you are the villain you’ve been running from.
So, step aside and let this evil you bring with you come for me. Kneel while they tear me flesh from flesh. Turn away your head while gnash my teeth away.
Let. Them. Come.
For they know who I am.
I have spent much in solitude in preparation for your treachery.
My heart guarded with the thickest of water from the deepest and darkest seas.
If I fall in defeat, you will still be there kneeling, and you and your army will be swallowed by my earth. You will drown in the water of my roots and in turn, revive me again.
And there I shall be in my forest of green yet again, with you beneath my beastly brown, and sentenced to a lifetime of earthquakes beneath my worn feet.
I feel as though there are a lot of forms of heartbreak one can feel in their time on this Earth. And I feel that way rather a life last 100 years, or if it’s cut short right in its prime. Some experience every form of it. And those are the people that hold the most truth and strength. However, unresolved, those are also the people that go on to cause great suffering around them. And on the opposite end, there are those who have been through each heartache, did the work to heal, and allow themselves to give fully again to experience the fullness of something. And if they ever cross paths with the first version and connect in absolute, it can be disastrous.
This world can hold so much sadness. However, one of the saddest to witness or experience, especially close to home, is to witness and/or experience someone that is so much of a dreamer, that they can no longer see clearly.
I flip back through notes, years’ worth, even one as recent as my very dark birthday. He spoke of hoping and praying to see and experience all of the adventures that were being written about amongst us. It makes me feel sorry for him reading it now. Because the secret part that I could always see and held knowledge of was the blissful fact that writing down those adventurous plans, were always part of the adventure.
Each and every word penned down, a grin on the face; those poetic verbiages, were part of the greatest adventure. And in that sense, knowing now, he missed them all. He missed our greatest adventures.
While he was dreaming of other lives, other adventures, even with other people, here I sat, penning down adventures of a lifetime. Bringing them to life, I penned down a manifesto. I was living every moment of bliss we were building and had built. Both by living them, and by poetic penmanship. I sat there fulfilled. You? Sad that one could miss every single one daydreaming of something better.
When enough isn’t enough, we miss the best parts of our lives.
And now? Well now, I grow old content and fulfilled. Because adventures, I have lived them. The greatest ones.
I also get to be the saddest. Because for years, I thought I was living out these adventures with the greatest of all soulmates. And now, I am slammed with a realization that I travelled miles and mountains with a ghost. A phantom man ran his hands through my hair. A phantom shivered up my spine as he shook my world.
I flew in the clouds as I hallucinated the greatest love of all time.
And you?
I feel pain for your soul. We get one life gifted to us by mother nature’s womb. As I grow content in the gray that forms in my sweet and worn scalp, you wrinkle in regret. Too much time living in your own needs of protection have robbed you and cost you all of the incredible journeys that were right in front of you.
They weren’t enough. For you. And now, they have come to pass and haunt you. Fantasy smoke has cleared, and bones aren’t as sturdy as they once were. Thrown aside when not benefiting you, all of the things and people left in your wake dust off and come to view you like a museum piece as they live on.
And when and if this ends, I will leave fulfilled. Because heaven knows, I lived every single second of every single one of the greatest journeys of my life.
The Truth and the Lies of the Journey 