IT FEELS THE SAME --by Kreed

(Image source: corablu.com)

Home; some say it's where the heart is but I've always felt like a stranger there.

The air still had the same stench and the sun never ceased to smile.

It was like walking back into my past. Though time had taken its toll on this place, it didn’t change a thing on this path.

I wasn’t a stranger on this path and neither were the songs that accompanied me when I treaded it.

I've lost count the number of times my tears have watered this earth but I could count the number flowers that sprouted thereafter.

I stopped at the place where it all began and I could still sense the fear. I started from the place where it all ended and I could still feel the courage.

I saw the same buildings I had seen years before, but not the same faces. Today, I saw a man, only yesterday he was a child but his eyes gave away the same secrets: despair and emptiness (hopelessness)

I passed by my old school, or what was left of it. Within those walls, I was an outsider, just as I was today.

I remembered their errors, I remembered my mistakes, but all were in the past.

I had left in one piece but not without scars. It was here I fell as a boy; it was here I rose as a man.

I walked past the garden and I could spot a happy couple in a sea of sad faces. It was like light in the midst of darkness or gold in clay.

It was here we lavished each other with love, just like the flowers that crowned this garden with beauty, and the lake that made it felt like paradise.

Today I was alone and my thoughts were drowned by her laughter but not her laughter

It was what we once had but today she was betrothed to another. I once lived it but today, they were only memories.

I saw the sun set, nature was shutting down but then the street lamps came on. Man had always rebelled, right from Eden, but this time, in a good way.

I was now under the beam from the lamp, no longer at the sun's mercy. Then someone called out from the shadows. Only yesterday she had it all but then came destruction. An innocent child she was but tonight, she was searching for her next kobo.

I came across the chapel. Its beauty was gradually fading but it had not lost its essence. It was here I learnt my first prayers, it was he who gave me a reason to believe and it was he who taught me the importance of faith. Today, I was by his grave stone. From dust he came and to dust he returned.

I looked back and then ahead. It was then I realized the truth, “The past, I can’t change but the future, I can amend.” My wounds would always heal but not my scars. They said time heals but nobody told me that it also ruins.