( I Thought) I was Doing so Well

I thought about you today.

It had been months since you've crossed my mind, and it was today that you found your way back in.

How is it, that you always find a way to make me smile, in the saddest of ways?

How do you always find your way back, when I've done my best to eradicate any and every memory of you from me?

Well..


It was a simple thought, nothing too extraordinary. I remembered how you used to joke,

how you would always use that same mid-high voice that was so cute.

How you would always scrunch your face when I poked your nose, and mouth your words comically wide.

I laughed alone to myself, and then I felt it..

A wave of crippling agony like phantom scars over the loss of someone that cared so much for me.

A burning sensation in a part of me that I know to be abstract, and never perceivable.

A threatening danger of something  inside of me that absolutely refuses to flicker out, no matter the pain.

These things happened in an instant,

and in a moment of absolute clarity, the curtain was drawn, the shadows were gone, and the embers remained

The thought left then, and it was replaced by the knowing,

Almost instantly my mind switched to the fighting,

The jeers,

The pain..

I let these go, because months of practice allowed these thoughts to flow.

As an electric shock to my mind, warning me of the path my thoughts were veering into.

I let them go, because the embers remained.

I watched the negativity sweep away, because the fire, while dying, was still burning, just a little.

...

I thought about you today..

But I guess I never really stopped..

The embers remain.

And I don't think that they will ever fully go out.