in my youth i would look at pictures, i would weep for the child i had been, i would stare and my gaze would become muddled and burred, from despair i would beg “what happened to you?”

and i was reminded again of it, but this time, this time the child had answer, i begged him again the question “what happened to you?”

and he replied, “you lived.”

simple and true, i am nothing without the distance, i have seen, i have loved, i have despaired, i have danced, i have written, i have gone, i have betrayed, i have been betrayed, i have been loved, i have been abandoned, and all of it precious, all this accumulation, all these markers on a very long journey.

i’d rather have traveled the world than to remain.