for the time when i forgot

when you go it will be sparrows all around you. the house will smell like summer as you fall down and into the train where you will be next to the girl with glitter on her face.

you won't know how to talk but you will remember what it feels to have poetry. you will still have the dust from your youth. maybe the rust on your guitar case latches will be gone.

everything is timing. now there's a pain in your arm and something is wrong in your stomach all at once. you can't stay dizzy all the time, can you? maybe you're just too sad to know where you were when you were walking up and down those small brown streets and your dreams lie inside the pigeon beaks that you would feed when you were trying.

what is real?

VELVETEEN RABBIT
by Margery Williams

(this starts at the point when the Skin Horse and the Rabbit are talking)

The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.

"The Boy's Uncle made me Real," he said. "That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."

The Rabbit sighed. He thought it would be a long time before this magic called Real happened to him. He longed to become Real, to know what it felt like; and yet the idea of growing shabby and losing his eyes and whiskers was rather sad. He wished that he could become it without these uncomfortable things happening to him.

never goodbye

airport goodbye scenes are never my favorite. each farewell gets harder and harder to bear so let's make a deal. i won't say goodbye, instead i'll say "later" because i don't want to give this a sound of finality in it. i refuse to be defeated this way. we will see each other again, if not in this life, then in heaven. if i don't say goodbye to you now, i will allow myself the luxury of thinking of you and not feeling guilty about it. that's how i want it anyway. if we never get the chance to speak to each other again face to face, remember that my thoughts have never wandered far from you. almost everything i see or hear or taste brings me back to you.

there was a time when i thought closure was what i needed in order to move on, whatever moving on entailed. i have come to realize that closure is just an illusion, and so is distance. the bonds we share bridges the distance between us, whether it is time, space, or dimension. "my memories of you and how you have completed my existence will never fade from me. i will never need to say goodbye to you."

only hellos and laters.

so, hello.