All is gone,
They say,
Irrecoverable
Irrevocable
Umchangeable.
Gone,
Lost,
Vanished,
Never to be found
In any crevice
Of the world again.
We will only look upon
What was
In our fading yellowed memories
Until they, too,
So fleeting in the vastness of time
Are that-
Irrecoverably
Irrevocably
Unchangeably
Gone,
Lost,
Vanished,
Never to be found
In any crevice of the world again.
That which was originally insubstantial
Will never truly stand,
And what was meant to be
Is destined.
But I refuse to believe.
Though time shall wash away
The grains of my memories
Like tides upon a shore,
Layer past layer past layer past layer-
Though they may be lost,
They are not gone.
For nothing is ever truly gone;
Sands seperated from the shore scatter like blown dust in the seas,
Drifting apart to the farthest corners
Of the earth,
But they continue to be
In a dissembled form,
And the beach
Forever bears the imprint of where they were;
As my memory, and as time,
Shall always hold the past.
And you may be lost,
As I sail forward,
A sequence of color photographs
Fading into
Black and white,
Grey and white
White and white
Until all is but a blur;
But you will never ever be gone.
A drop of water that creases paper may fade,
But will never be gone,
For the molecules are one
And change
Cannot be reversed.
Thus I know
That you live on,
And although the pain will henceforth be a constant,
The pain of you, lost, lost for eternity-
At least I can always take refuge
That you are at least not,
As they say,
Gone.
