"Why do you walk so quickly?"

The destination is all we long to know.

But cars, boats, planes, trains –

movement is all they know

No room to celebrate life

No room to contemplate death

They go

And we are but lost souls trying to keep pace

With the mechanisms of our own invention

New waters to navigate

Changes in the tides

An infinite array of crossroads

Is what we find

An endless conveyor belt of crosses

From which we can never hide

Always something

Never nothing

To slow down for one second

Is to be one second closer

To a glorious story remaining unwritten

A dilapidated house left for good

A dandelion without a child's wish

A prayer that never escaped the lips

This humanly inhuman fascination with movement

Must

keep going, keep going, keep going, keep g–

What have we here?

Photos covered

In layers of dust

Pressed flowers

In tattered scrapbooks

Old favorite songs

On a scratched CD

Recollections

of old lovers in old cities

That lovely Nostalgia

Both a blessing and a curse

Offering us the promise of a brief respite

If only we turn around

That ever-present struggle

To shrug off the demons from the past

"Remember how good your life used to be?"

"You haven't even changed for the better."

"There is so much you're missing out on."

There will always

be those who remind us

of where we've been

And try to convince us

that we miss it

But the photos are faded

The flowers are dead

The songs are cacophonous

And lovers are turned strangers

only look ahead.

Give a small salute

to the death of sweet memories

and idealized versions of persons

existing solely in the imagination

And then go.

Keep going.

Can't stop.

Like little sharks.

"Why do you walk so quickly?"

Movement is all I can bear to know.