Travel Shorts

walking the cobblestones of my favourite streets I am marred by the ghosts of my former selves the eight year old draws herself inward shuddering hiding her shy face as she searches for her lost light somewhere in the shade confused and frightened she would love to love if she knew she'd be loved and the fourteen year old self pulls deeply on the perpetrator of her asthma glancing to her scuffed shoes and everywhere anywhere but in my gaze she breathes pain and snorts lines of unanswered questions for breakfast there she is again at twenty-one and she has felt the rupture of the unbreakable bond known loss so scarring she will never see the same at twenty-five she is somehow surer talks of peyote dreams and distant seas trinkets sparkling in her matted dreadlocks I see her eyes reflect in mine stoop down to pick up the lantern and pass it over with sparks of promise in my glance willing her to carry on all I wanted was a word and I got alphabet soup at twenty-eight the end seems closer she knows now life and fragility are intertwined and the promise of tomorrow soon becomes yesterday I blow the smoke from the corner of my mouth and it stretches and curls its way around causing circles eddies in the listless smoldering orange glow of peace