Sonnets in the wind.

This day a few years ago, I lost something that I could never get back. And at the time, I wasn't even around to know what I'd lost, running around doing what I thought had to be done.

A little while later, I'd come to realize what it was and how heavy a cost it was. It's one of my treasures and one of my greatest tragedies. I carry it with me and examine it daily. For a long time, I thought I wouldn't be able to go on. The regret and guilt were crushing. They still are most days. Sometimes, you can scourge yourself with your greatest treasure as well. But, time as it does, passes. Weights don't lessen, but become more bearable The scourging? Well, that's personal preference.

"My little china girl, you shouldn't mess with me. I'll ruin everything you are."

He walked into the dust, carrying a wasteland inside, dust shaking loose from the cracks with every step. He discovered along the long lonely road that living wasn't nearly as easy as dying for her would have been. He stopped and noticed that with each step, he left a few sentences written in the stuff of his wounds along the way. Messages. Clues. Sonnets. All a trail. To trace him? To see where he went? To see where he was going? It didn't matter if she followed or not. He'd leave them just the same. Somehow, a message. A manifesto. An apology.

He stopped and stared at the stars. Looking for a way home, heedless of the fact the he had destroyed it years before. He stared for a bit. Hoping that somehow a way would appear to him. Nothing showed. Nothing ever did. He trudged on. Eyes forward but occasionally looking for something in his peripherals. Searching for a way to take all the hurt he'd caused back into himself to seal it from the ones the loved the most. But until he could find away to bottle or release those demons, he'd continue to try to become the man he should have been in the first place.

Loss after loss has a way of motivating great change. He stared into the nearly solid ghost of his loss. Looked at her eyes, brushed her lips with his hands, and wished for away to make his greatest failure as a man; fly free, unfettered by the destruction he had wrought. Fear had grown in him like a cancer, and it wasn't until after the time had passed that he was able to excise the sickness and leave it behind. Too little too late. One of the many stories of his life. But it never stopped him from looking backwards fondly, on the greatest time of his life.

For all the hurt, for everything lost, for everything that haunted his every moment; He had found nothing that could take the sunshine from that time. And that was the thing that kept him going. One foot in front of the other. Faces on the horizon. Two hearts in his chest pumping in time.