nostalgia
I am a stranger to nostalgia.
I do not yearn for what has left,
no golden dusk, no softened past,
no echoes call me back to rooms
where time has gathered dust like ash.
No faces linger in my mind
as specters dressed in tender glow,
no songs return with tender sting,
no footsteps urge where I won’t go.
Nostalgia is to me a stranger’s grief,
a tide that pulls but leaves me dry.
It never just arrives unbid—
and do you wonder, do you ask why?
Because I have left as one who burns,
as one whose hands release with will.
No tether tugs, no roots remain,
no hush of longing, only still.
What is abandoned stays as stone,
no whisper softens what was hard.
The past does not extend its arms,
and perhaps it is because I have never dropped my guard.
So I allow the world relive its ghosts,
let others fold into their pain.
But for me I try to be the one who never turns,
As the possibility of what can be makes me the one who won’t remain.