The Empty Road

My office is situated in a new commercial development area. Much of it is vacant grass land, winnowed saplings, and the occasional mound of dirt. A paved road runs through this area, straight for a block, before rounding the corner into more of the untouched landscape.

This has been my place for the past year.

The place for me to run, walk, or rest and contemplate the most difficult of questions, the introspective ones.

It's always a struggle to truly identify what it is we want, and the reasons underlying some of our choices are just as illusive.

I used to think all I had to do was be on my own to solve my problems. Whenever a difficult situation arises, I sought to be on my own.

Lately it hasn't helped. Even among the solitude and the silence and warmth of the sun, I can't make straight the tangled.

There are others here sometimes. A father with his daughter on a tricycle, two children kicking a soccer ball back and forth, a girl with her dog.

Maybe I'm doing this all wrong. Everyone else is here with someone after all.

What Could've been

Sometimes I wish that we could know for a fact that there was no going back,
that the paths we chose not to take, the rocks we didn't overturn
would remain shrouded in mystery forever, such that
those whispers of what could've been wouldn't be relevant.

It's a terrible habit to continuously look back at the choices you've made,
and wondered if it's the right one.

When all we really should do is be steadfast in our chosen direction, and work with the world we've nurtured for ourselves.

It's finished.

Every so often I have this identity crisis.
It occurs whenever a significant hurdle has been completed.

To find that the nemesis which defined you for so long has been vanquished,
it leaves a void.

Where you were once so accustomed to the next page of your story simply being a continuation of the last,

all of a sudden, it's a new chapter.

And so begins the desperate search for something new.

You still recognize me

What a difference a few weeks, months, years can make.
How different we become without really realizing it.
How foreign we are to what we are now and who we were.

Life winds its convoluted way through time and space, junctions form in the most seemingly random places
and yet they couldn't have been any more perfect.

An old acquaintance, long written off.
A quotation, long forgotten.
A feeling, long lost.

Something reminds you of who you were.
Pulling yourself out of the present and onto a higher plain,
gazing at where you've been and what you've learned and what you've become.

Seeing where you've gone astray and lost your way.

All because someone still recognized you.