Welcome to Gaia! ::

This one was written for Henson (I'm giving it to him tomorrow), but rereading it, I think it's more universal than I had thought. Well, enjoy!

~~~~~
"Memoir to Virtue (My Memoir)"
Lose yourself in the yellowing pages
Of this book of mine--
You'll never lose your way
With my tears as your guide,
Marring the ink with now dry wetness--
Fall in love with paper and pen
And help me live again!--
Breathless at still words,
I know, I was too!
Can you feel what I felt,
Stirring inside me
As my eyes drank deep
From these pages?

How can dead wood be so alive?

My heart bleeds onto the pages,
And forms the very words you read.
How will you receive them, I wonder?
But that isn't my place to write--

It is yours.

This is what I leave you, Virtue:
That you may have all of my heart
That I do not take to the grave,
My musings and my music together
With my poetry and my prose--
And of course, my Love--
That when you read this, maybe...
Maybe you will remember
All that I was and hoped to be,
My passion and my apathy,
My kindness and my cruelty,
My sweetnesses and sorrows,
And all my love.
That maybe when you read this...
This yellow paper will show a golden thread
Running its whole length--
And maybe feel my presence
Even when I'm not there--
And maybe hear my heart beating
Even if it isn't anymore--
And maybe know that no matter
What happens to me,
I am and will always be glad
To have had you in my life.

How temporary is a goodbye once written?
Is it farewell forever if inked in?
In any case, it's always so tender,
And can be softened further
By the spilling of tears
And always, always be cherished.
And I will, past the end of my days.
~~~~~

Love and Vale,
~Andrew/Valens

Agreed. On about the fourth readthrough (after I had stopped crying), I decided that it needed some serous editing, especially on the accidental rhyme. I wanted this one to be different from but still follow the flowing pattern of "Lover's Prayer", while weaving in the common themes we've shared and the musings we've had together (such as about death and living beyond the dying point, Love, Virtue, etcetera).
-Andrew

Thanks. I'd like to revamp this some. Just...maybe not today....
-Andrew

Thanks, Elv, and sorry it's taken me a week and a half to respond. It's...been pretty busy around here.

The yellowing pages (a reference to aging books), is something of an insider's knowledge. This was written for Henson, my Latin teacher, who proved, once again, that there is something to be learned from old books by dead Romans, often about some insufferable war, or ballads to dead Greeks or Trojans, all of which is the case with Vergil's Aeneid.
-Andrew