Long Departed

I wasn't always a monster. I still have a few fond memories of my youth locked away where no one can hurt them. I looked different when I was a little kid; I'm the little trooper in a cub scout uniform below. Somewhere on the way, I got lost. Things aren't as I imagined them to be, and my future looks less like my past every day.



A LONG DEPARTED ME

The rest of my old friends
Sit talking at a campfire
As always, I’m detached
And doing something else

They sit for hours chatting,
To swap some crazy stories,
And tell some dirty jokes
That mention me sometimes

While I look at a photo
Of long-departed me.
His soft, small, shiny eyes
Still gleam with inner fire.

My smile unlike others’
Was crooked then, not now.
The boy no longer here
Left little bits and pieces

Behind so I remember
The good times more than bad.
The new became the old,
And each day, life seemed worse.

When happiness meant choices,
I settled for next-best.
I squandered youth away
In waiting for tomorrow:

A day that never came.
Experience has changed me
So much I don’t remember
The photo’s circumstance.

I see a little boy
Whose hair was shorter then.
A cub-scout uniform
Obscures bony limbs

Too weak to bear the weight
Of later years’ abuse
When smiles turned to scowls,
Egos bruised, knuckles broke.

I sit and stare for hours;
I try, but can’t remember
The moment that I changed
And why I didn’t notice.

My past is in this picture.
I stare at two bright eyes
Now foreign to my world;
I toss the picture forward.

The fire’s almost spent,
Its hungry embers lick
The picture off the paper
Which quickly burns and crinkles

We all say our goodbyes
To start the trip back home.
I stay a little longer
And watch the fire burn.

***

I look quite different now, time and experience changed me. My stare is not my own: I have to share it. My features gargoyled: efforts to change them are pointless.