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How do you define yourself?

Is it by your accomplishments?

Your career?

How about your possessions?

 Do you define yourself by your family’s status?

By the education you have?

The house that you live in?

The prestige of your neighborhood?

 Do you define yourself by the car you drive?

The clothes you wear?

The jewelry you own?

The trophy on your arm?

 What about the stories?

I hear they might be important.

You look at me in disbelief.

Stories versus possessions?

That’s crazy talk.

 No, listen.

Remember when you were small?

Before you noticed or cared about things.

You heard stories.

 Stories of myths, legends,

Great and small people.

You wanted to be and not be them.

Did that shape you?

Is that who you became?

Sometimes it all feels like too much

I know you feel it too.

The dirt, and greed, and crime,

Meanness, hurt, and sadness.

No escaping no leaving.

No slamming that door.

And the screaming in your head.

It goes on forever.

But you pray that it does

It will stop only

to be replaced by silence

Dead stone tomb cold.

The end of all

Deep down you know

There’s nothing else.

 Then something happens.

A small something.

A tiny piece of beauty.

A little piece of love.

A mini bit of color.

Just sitting there,

For anyone to see

Amid the shattered waste

But you look and you listen.

And you see and you hear.

Because that small tiny little mini thing

Makes the large everything else

A newer year in my older life.

I resolve to do more change and less same,

To go and show and stop.

 I resolve to think nearer and feel further.

To go empty and stay full,

To be here and stay there.

 I resolve to stop this and start that.

More imaginings and less ramblings,

To finish these and leave those.

 I resolve to move forward and decide against.  

Smaller thoughts, larger fantasies,

Faster pausing, slower rewinding.

 And least and last,

To resolve to revolve,

And be resolutely resolute.

You keep dancing in the back of my mind

Doing a tap dance along the spine of my soul

Where are you in this world?

I can feel you just out of reach like a dollar on a string

 I dream of times together that haven’t happened

Loving you only in my sleep

Waiting here on my porch under the new spring sky

You some place far away

 Do you feel my eyes peeking into your heart?

Does your soul notice the glances from mine?

My thoughts graze along the back of your mind

Trying to taste a response

 Find me I’m lost

Save me I’m gone