Shining Thru

The rose petals fall one by one leaving only the thorned handle

You grab it and it pricks the blood from you hand

You throw it but it sticks, you stomp it into the dirt

And turn to walk away but….stop, looking back, now nearly destroyed

The memories of the beautiful petals remain, the vibrant colors in your mind

The soft, perfumed beauty that the stem once held

Seeing what’s left in the dirt makes you pick it up

Feeling the blood pricked once again

Not able to put it back down

Not able to throw it away and begin again

Wishing you could watch it bloom into the beautiful flower it once was

You save it…carrying it…holding it….wishing

Isn’t it strange the things you pick up from the people you run across and interact with at different crossroads in your life?  Words, phrases, habits, gestures that you can trace back to exactly the person who influenced you, and you notice yourself still saying that one strange phrase or gesture years later…maybe you don’t even talk to that person any more but you can still remember that they were the one who got you saying some strange inside joke that you are now the only one around you that gets it.

I can still remember several people from years ago that I only talk to rarely now who left their mark on me.  Who have me still remembering silly phrases from late college nights or gestures of comfort that still strangely hold their soothing power today.  I think it’s interesting how certain words or gestures can hold their mental hold even after the connection is long gone.  Some things can still make you smile just by saying them, even when you’re the only one to get the joke.  Memories of things that make you smile from something that seems like a far off distant land…you wonder if the other people still remember these things the way you do.

For me, the places, gestures, and sill phrases are still pretty clear in my mind.  The things that helped to form me to who I am today can still be clearly traced back to another time in my life…and I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

Memories seem to be of importance in most cultures, back to ancient times when it was a treat to hear the story of the culture’s history.  And then we moved to journals and works of art (clay, paintings, tapestries, etc).  Writing the unknown thoughts that pour forth, the gaping knowledge you can’t always tap, not wanting to lose it….but why have we always wanted to keep things from our time alive?  Do we really write it to go back and read, do we hope that someone else will read it later?  Do we write to keep things alive at all, or to let it go?  What is the real purpose of all of the traditions that go into the keeping of memories?  It seems like every culture has their own traditions about storytelling and memories, but do they tell them to keep them alive and well or to let them go and learn from the past?