and forward

I feel quite sad.

The world is cruel and I never let myself believe it. I feel an agonising loss for things I never had, an empty craving for lies in a long-past time. I remember a forest in the school courtyard, broken cement slabs where we played, people I might meet again someday.

I know I cannot return to that haven; I know the journey's been too long now to reverse and forget. Love has withered to foul, bitter hate, and like the survivors of the generations that died with the cold, I must learn the new ways of the world or be swept from existence by the red queen's carpet. I must pretend the past never was the way it was.