Faded Fondness

Dedicated to Antonio Caruso; one of the most influential and important people I had the honor of knowing.

There in between the weathered red brick

I lived out my years of

Adolescence and innocence

Surrounded by the things I held dear

Much like my shelf full of books

Or the chair draped with jackets

And blankets I slept with the night before

It seems almost perfect now

Sitting on this quiet hill

With that acre and half filled with runs

On summer days

Piles of leaves in the autumn

And sled riding in the wintertime

But hidden deeper below

Are things invisible to outside eyes

Much like the cracked shower tiles

Bent hinges on doors

Shattered glass on the concrete basement floor

Like a memory concealed for later

This is how it went for most of those years

When I could not bear to see it

Or hear it anymore

Then one day

It finally ceased

Faded away like any other distasteful memory

That wave of peace washed over me

Until one day

We finally left that weathered brick building

And I refused to look back

Much like the books on my shelves

I flipped to a new page in the chapter

Of my own life