The Gift

 As I sit still in my home, every ounce of my body feels the weight of my transgressions, the toils of my traumas, the burdens of my past and the abdication of squandered hope.  

My body creaks like seized rusty rivets on an aged naval hull. My mind, and what remains of it, gloats on about an earlier version of itself….sharp, intelligent and curious…those characteristics long departed with my discarded neurons like the gift wrapping of a present, its loss a talisman of the loneliness I feel, the empty presence I have to unwrap daily.

For I walk alone. Not by choice, but by circumstance…alas, by my decisions… and seemingly the belief that I was worth saving by someone. I fought a good fight in so many different arenas so many different battlefields so many different conflicts. The scars and sacrifices are real, But no one gazes upon them any longer. I’m too old to be someone’s hero, anyone’s prize.

Nothing more than a living shelf to store my medals…

I remain a soldier without a soul. Nothing left but the memories, of what I used to know who I used to be. 

And the realization that this battlefield is one only strangers will be visiting, Marveling over what transpired, one day, in history. Commemorating what was love and loss…..

While I watch peacefully from the canopies nearby, in silence, my only respite…

I was the Captain once...

 Over 6 years have elapsed since love has departed...

Now, I see things differently. The magic of the long-forgotten, but indelible moments has vanished from

this solemn place. When I gaze back in longing for what was lost, there is no clear and certain 

recollection, just simply a mirage of feelings, events & embraces erased from the substrate of my soul.

I gaze in appreciation on our daughter, the only lifeline and tether point between our lost spirits, the sole 

talisman left remaining to prove that our past even existed at all...

She is the light --- the embodiment of everything good, enriching, motivating and loving in my life.

She is the catalyst for my remaining sanity, the last remaining thread of hope in this deserted, arid, 

forgotten wasteland of emotion, the last harbor still actively serving kindness in all of my existence. 

At times, I recall the past. Alas, nothing but stale crumbs lining the tattered boards of a general store once 

vibrant in its prime, now left to time to dismantle, day by day, moment by moment, memory by memory.

But I won't ever forget what you meant to me, what this meant to my soul.

Once I was the captain, oh the captain of so much vigor, fervent emotion and happiness...

Now I sit alone in the respite harbor, my only enchanting moments left are when our daughter arrives in 

port.

But at least, I have memories of what being a captain was....

At least I faced the storms, at least I believed in us once.

For you can take the ship, you can take my youth, you can even take pieces of my memory, but you 

cannot change the fact that I sailed.

For I know I was once special to someone, albeit briefly...