Looking Back

As we make eye contact, I strike past the surface, the fragile glass barricade, and I am engulfed and taken aback.
I lose all sense of time, and I see the same person standing in front of me many years ago when we first met.

Deep, captivating eyes full of life. A carefree smile plastered on your face.
With the sun beaming on us we used to run through the park tumbling in the autumn leaves.
A harmony of laughs filled the room as we played pretend and imagined a whole new world.
From seconds, to minutes, to hours, and to years I grew up beside you.
An endless loop of precious memories from the past assemble to form the person that is you.

You. You are a disarray of fragmented memories that causes me such confusion.
How can time slowly disassemble pieces of my memory, stripping your existence, your essence, away? Day by day. Year by year.
Every recollection of you seems to contradict with the you I see in this instant. Who is this person standing in front of me that I though I knew so much about. All I know are illusions.

As I look back, our childhood moments are framed and will forever stay under the covering of glass. Inside holds the untouched memories of the past we are unable to reach back to.

Looking back. As I spot you in the corner of my eye I look into your eyes, but quickly turn away. A childhood friend is just a friend of the past if you only look back. A memory is only a visual representation, if you let it hang on the wall to collect dust.

Those precious memories were only the beginning, and somehow marked the end.
How I long to reach back, meet your eyes and with hands extended ask you to be my friend again.

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This is not really poetry, but it sort of looks like free verse. Today, I had a conversation with my friend about our past, since we were childhood friends, and I thought back on my other childhood friends who I don't really speak to anymore. We are "childhood friends", but the kind where you are only friends when you are younger. Time has separated us and this is dedicated to those people. This piece made me realize how I really cherished these days.