I didn't look back. I lost no time

In thinking about it, left without

A single extra word

My way with phrases all but invisible.

There was no such thing as retrospect.

I refused to need anyone, anything.

I knew I would have to leave it all behind.

And now in the darkness

I find something great and menacing

Dangerous and lingering hurt. I miss it--

New York City

How can I stand never again?

Never had any regrets

After I left. Before, worlds did not become kingdoms.

But things are different. I want another chance

But I don't get one. I never let myself love what I would have to leave.

Nothing had any permanence.

Life was a thing to throw away

Until it came to me. Until life landed in my arms.

I forgot to keep my heart to myself, and it flew to strangers.

I mourn an empire that I've built and broken.

And now that it's gone

It's the first thing I've ever missed

In Beijing I had nothing,

No gain no pain, nothing to lose--

Before then I can't even remember

And I had everybody. But they didn't have me.

Nothing worth memorization. I had no need for it. I did not want the world.

But now I miss it. How can I not try to forget?

How to be brave? How to bring myself to ashes?

How to rise and be again?

NYC never again, I think but I can't. Cannot. May not. Don't.

Is it gone now? Did I lose it? Did my city float away?

Did I ever even have it, or is all of this a dream?

Not the familiar trivial pictures in memory

But blaring, glaring traps just waiting for me

To fall, and I do. I fall like I was always afraid I would.

And now like nothing before, I am scared.

Coming too fast and I'm not brave enough.

I try not to anticipate it

But reminders of an uncertain beginning

Are everything. The end was so long ago.

I have only one connection now

Only one string, one thread.

I have no rope to pull me in

What if I'm drowning, then

I'll never know where I have gone

Until my shadow disappears. Reaching. Wanting.

Something to hold onto, something

To keep me from sinking

Below the surface, don't care if you don't believe me but

I'll let myself need someone for once

If you promise to keep me chained to you somehow

I need a more dependable

Link. Just words are enough if you will remember

So I know you know,

And at least you never got a chance to know how wrong I had been

That is why I trust you

I thought I would find you and know

But I never saw until I left the problem behind.

But I had to have left my newfound kingdom

For something... more than leaving

I want to trust. I want to need somebody's help

Because now that I realise I'm just

Like everyone else, everything emerges and I'm nothing more than

Human, no exellents' excellence, no Legendaria. No magic

No more than human, and I don't need the truth as much as I thought

My vision of myself was built on my own lies

And what I've learned cannot be replaced

I climbed high once, and saw clearly

But the hand hold I'd found broke

Because I didn't know enough not to tumble down forever

But when I fell I couldn't tell I had to keep pretending

That I could see

To keep the untruth and all else like dominoes

From tumbling down inside of me

I needed my glory more than I cared to admit.

Now I'm falling, crash and burn

I need another chance at this, there's so much more to learn

I've fallen. I don't want to want to get up again, but I do.

Not another chance in sight

There is nothing much than I can do

But read this and see what you see. I can't see the truth.

I've spent too long trying to find it, convincing myself I had found it.

I've read enough ficton to know

Not to hide it away,  but all I've ever known how to do is hide.

To them it's fine,  but in the stories I got stuck in my head

Not to shut it in, blot it out, every triumphantly righteous line

Taught me to embrace the pain, but it's only fiction. That's all it'll ever be.

I don't want to need my memories and

All I've learned to be but I do. I need something to hold onto.

I don't know what they'll expect of me

I don't even remember. I've lost everything I am

Except this chance that I might be making up

I put a message in a bottle and I throw it to the sea

It's all my imagination. But what if it were? Could I ever hope?

It'll never reach anything I ever knew, I say to me.

But if I do what you told me

Then maybe it'll come ashore somewhere,

After all. Will you look for it, on the water? Will you read it?

Because it will ease the hurt of unremembering

And knowing I'm doing the wrong thing, but

Not really being able to help it

A little if I know you know.

Now smiles mean more than they ever could.

And this may well be NYC never again, but I'll

Chase the horizon because the sun will be rising

Dusty sprinkles of light against some stranger's window

On the other side of a world that spins always. And I will be that stranger

And you will be on the other side

Of a world that will keep spinning me around and around

Until I find my place. So.