Sea of Memory

Dedicated to anyone who wishes they'd done something differently.
~~~

Curled up in a corner of her room
Sipping a cup of her favorite tea,
She reviews the pages, one by one,
Lost in a sea of memory.

Every other page brings laughter,
Almost every page, a tear
Some with joy of happy recollections
But mostly with regret, and sorrow,
And a haunting “what did I do wrong…”

Tomorrow she’ll ascend a stage
Amid her friends’ applause,
And receive a piece of paper
Declaring a further step in her education,

But no mark of this time is as clear
As the glint that sparks in the back of her eyes
And the unseen toughness
Wrought by wounding and scarring
That she will carry the rest of her days.

She still fights the demons of doubt,
But now she knows they can be beat;
The battle is clearer for her to see,
And she knows she must not retreat.

Yet naïveté, trust, and hope
War against every scrap of experience
That comes to mind at the moment,
There have been revelations, too,
Mountaintop times of exhilaration.

But all this seems so far away,
A distant memory from a dream of one
Still so young, yet spirit so aged,
As if observing another’s life.

It won’t always be like this, she knows,
Tonight will pass, and tomorrow’s joy
Will salve tonight’s wounds
And bring her another day closer to eternal wholeness,
But for now, this is all there will be…

Curled up in a corner of her room
Sipping a cup of her favorite tea,
She reviews the pages, one by one,
Lost in a sea of memory.