Herself

..and then, lost in clouded nostalgia, I struggle with the sadness that perhaps I didn't realize how sweet life was at the time. Yes, in all actuality some of those times were very hard, but I have managed in my reveries to rewrite my own history so that they somehow missed the endearing folds and slightly worn edges.. like an old photograph with its reality blurred. Fingerprints and watermarks and torn corners. Raindrops have bruised the pages I turned, and I took shelter, leaning against the side of a church as I rediscovered words used once and never again braved, lines written late in the evening when the world seemed wide open and willing, hopeless though I was..