The Dreamer

A dream in a waking life; a taste of snow and joyous pain.
She broke through the door so she could hear me;
have not let a soul come near me.
But the wind blew a different way;
and from seas of blue and clouds of grey,
she vowed to forever accept me.
Have not let a soul come to know me.
The world showed new color:
every face, every flower,
comes smiling with eyes gleaming at me.
Have not let my soul come to be.
A self re-alignment to breathe a new life and
forget the sour weeps of my sorrow;
how I hope that there won't be tomorrow.
As the mind starts to see
the wounded truth, reality;
a broken-winged bird never flies free.
Will never let my soul accept me.

 

Date: Nov 30, 2012 

Where: Home

Don't be a Sissyphussy

They say that you can go as far as your the eyes can see, but there’s more.
You can go as far as your thoughts can think.
And on that day, you cut out the thread that has sewn your eyes shut
and realize that you’ve been a slave in a room full of strangers.
Your feet wrapped in burning cloth and skin, forced to walk an endless plank.
Buckled long sleeves like chains holding you down,
screaming “you cannot celebrate a life that is not yours!”
but it’s the only thing you can really own.
 
Been stuck in this web for so long the spider’s teeth starts to tickle.
But if you ask yourself, “why are you here?”
don’t dare comeback with an, “I don’t know.”
 
For over a year I’ve been living with a collar around my neck that feels like a wrestler’s grip,
and the greatest day of my life was reading a book in a train crowded with eyes, shoulders and limbs.
And if you asked me then the same question.
I’d say, that “I understand...”
“I understand that we must be conscious of ourselves, and of other people. That life is too beautiful to spend with our

minds tucked away in the corners of a cellar, being infested by rodents,

instead of being shared like a breeze of a mountain, so gentle it could reach your soul.
 
If a poem that takes over a year to write, is what it takes
for other people to realize how lucky they are to live,
and how unlucky they are to simply exist.
Then this is my biggest achievement.
And I’d finally unbuckle the chains on my wrist,
free myself of the collar around my neck,
raise my arms high and rejoice.

 

You are free, if you put your mind to it.

 

 

Date: Oct 7 (5.30am)
Where: room/bathroom

To the woman who slept on my bed

Here I lay,
clothed in its warmth,

familiarizing a body

with the sultry air

your skin embarked; as my

fingers guide their way

through the rumpled sheets

mapping what was your movement.

I plant my face

on the pillow to inhale

the scent of your energy:

dry sweat, tears, saliva; a narrow

passage

toward a fragment

of your being,

as I reside to the only region

where I can possess you.

When: June 16, 2011

Where: room

Territories || Gregory Djanikian

They thought the trouble was over,

they thought they had talked it all out,

it was a mistake, she’d said, this infatuation

for someone else which had turned suddenly

too serious, she could see that now.

But they thought there was nothing left of it,

their nerves had been rubbed so raw

through bouts of anger, shame, even love,

so many words had come and gone between them

that they couldn’t easily remember

what they’d said, what they’d imagined.

But it didn’t matter now,

they thought they had gotten over

something difficult, something which had felt

immovable, the long unbearable ache

which had become too much a habit,

and they were celebrating in their way,

having dinner at a new expensive place

where they had no history of being together,

where they expected nothing.

They were sipping wine, a deep rich red,

the waiter was hovering over them like a generous uncle

and they were selecting everything he had suggested—

how good to be in his hands for awhile!

Soon it was happening, the old ardor

was coming back, they were beginning to flirt

with one another, the way she said baby,

the way his shoulder was brushing hers,

the way they were allowing themselves to think

for the first time in a long time

of the good sex they might later have,

the after-talk which would be easy and low.

And maybe he hadn’t meant what he was about to say,

maybe when she remarked how she loved the leek soup

it was the wine in him, his jauntiness,

that made him ask what else she loved,

jokingly at first, whether she loved

the stuffed mushrooms on his plate, the braised beef,

or maybe she loved what others were having,

this one in the dark suit, or that one

with the coyly unbuttoned collar, or maybe

she loved the whole damn menu in fact,

he couldn’t help himself, the words came

pouring forth, spilling all over the table.

And it was not until late at night

when she’d finally gone to her room

and closed herself off from him in sleep

that he stopped talking and remembered only half

of what he’d said because he’d said too much,

created too much damage, crossed some boundary

he had avoided most of his life.

Maybe it was desert, maybe tundra, or the white

insinuating madness of the polar ice cap,

but wherever he was was strange and dangerous,

and somehow dazzling for all that,

and only in the morning would he know for better or  worse

in which direction each of them would be walking it,

though never had he felt, as he had tonight,

so permissive with himself, so luxuriously

tactless, having said again and again

the words he thought he could never bear

to use, so suddenly commonplace,

so readily available to him now.


--

this feels real and pefect at this moment and the last.

a blade of grass || Brian Patten

You ask for a poem.
I offer you a blade of grass.
You say it is not good enough.
You ask for a poem.
I say this blade of grass will do.
It has dressed itself in frost,
It is more immediate
Than any image of my making.
You say it is not a poem,
It is a blade of grass and grass
Is not quite good enough.
I offer you a blade of grass.
You are indignant.
You say it is too easy to offer grass.
It is absurd.
Anyone can offer a blade of grass.
You ask for a poem.
And so I write you a tragedy about
How a blade of grass
Becomes more and more difficult to offer,
And about how as you grow older
A blade of grass
Becomes more difficult to accept.

--


I still remember the old self who admired this poem; the person who memorized each line and dictated it sharply along early showers of water, towards a troubling but promising day. Yes, I feel like the narrator, I feel what the speaker feels. It is not difficult for me to offer grass, but often when I do, the person has no chance to accept, because they have their backs turned or they have left hours after. Left me standing there amidst the gray afternoon clouds, the leaves of the trees singing the blues and my heart making this small pounding sound as if chasing the past with tiny yet hard leaps.

Everything, Philip Levine

Lately the wind burns
the last leaves and evening
comes too late to be
of use, lately I learned
that the year has turned
its face to winter
and nothing I say or do
can change anything.
So I sleep late and waken
long after the sun has risen
in an empty house and walk
the dusty halls or sit
and listen to the wind
creak in the eaves and struts
of this old house. I say
tomorrow will be different
but I know it won't.
I know the days are shortening
and when the sun pools
at my feet I can reach
into that magic circle
and not be burned. So
I take the few things
that matter, my book,
my glasses, my father's ring,
my brush, and put them aside
in a brown sack and wait --
someone is coming for me.
A voice I've never heard
will speak my name
or a face press to the window
as mine once pressed
when the world held me out.
I had to see what it was
it loved so much. Nothing
had time to show me
how a leaf spun itself
from water or water cried
itself to sleep for
every human thirst. Now
I must wait and be still
and say nothing I don't know,
nothing I haven't lived
over and over,
and that's everything.

-

I say tomorrow will be different
but I know it won't.
I know the days are shortening
and when the sun pools
at my feet I can reach
into that magic circle
and not be burned.

There are words that are so bitter and so true that could ironically give birth to a newly replenished life. I hope the above quote has the current to push me towards life, and towards meaning. That is everything that needs to be thought of whenever living has become surviving. Or surviving has become a task not more ordinary than a clock designed to do one purpose, and that is to continue going.

Waving Goodbye || Gerald Stern

I wanted to know what it was like before we
had voices and before we had bare fingers and before we
had minds to move us through our actions
and tears to help us over our feelings,
so I drove my daughter through the snow to meet her friend
and filled her car with suitcases and hugged her
as an animal would, pressing my forehead against her,
walking in circles, moaning, touching her cheek,
and turned my head after them as an animal would,
watching helplessly as they drove over the ruts,
her smiling face and her small hand just visible
over the giant pillows and coat hangers
as they made their turn into the empty highway.

--

I wanted to know what it was like before we
had voices and before we had bare fingers and before we
had minds to move us through our actions
and tears to help us over our feelings,

I am not quite sure if being conscious of your action defeats the purpose but what is special here is human emotion and the mere feeling of "being there". Like an animal would, sometimes it is indeed better to just let go. But being human, sometimes we have to force ourselves to let go just to have a tiny glimmer of feeling it.

If || Goran Simic

If on the subway my hand accidentally touched yours

on that merciless ride every evening back

to my cold bachelor apartment

perhaps you would look for my shy eyes

hidden under the cap

and think :

Is this the man who empties a pocket of silence into my

voice mail

a few times every day?

In the crowded train

nobody would notice me caressing a strand of your hair

that insolently smells of my pillow.

Nobody but you.

Perhaps for a moment you would think

that the world is full of lonely people

including the one

who has been sending unsigned Christmas cards

for years.

If I leaned on you tenderly

in that packed train full of tired or sleepy people

perhaps you would feel the fire in my skin

and wish to warm yourself one stop longer

on the shoulder of the shy weirdo

whose warmth reminds you of something

you have forgotten,

thinking :

The world is full of cold people with north in their bosoms

who fear touch might melt their ice.

I could have touched your hand if you hadn't got off

at the stop where you never get off.

I only needed a moment to show you

your earring

alive in my pocket all these years.

The same one I found in my bed

so long ago

before you forgot me.

But who knows if you would recognize it at all?

You would think:

The world is full of lonely people

and lost earrings.

--

This is a poem that I used to memory by heart, that used to inspire my sadness, my poetry and shaded margins of my nights. I feel the obsession lurking within me, and I can almost hear the speaker's voice continue his thoughts within me.

This Was Once a Love Poem || Jane Hirshfield

This was once a love poem,
before its haunches thickened, its breath grew short,
before it found itself sitting,
perplexed and a little embarrassed,
on the fender of a parked car,
while many people passed by without turning their heads.

It remembers itself dressing as if for a great engagement.
It remembers choosing these shoes,
this scarf or tie.

Once, it drank beer for breakfast,
drifted its feet
in a river side by side with the feet of another.

Once it pretended shyness, then grew truly shy,
dropping its head so the hair would fall forward,
so the eyes would not be seen.

IT spoke with passion of history, of art.
It was lovely then, this poem.
Under its chin, no fold of skin softened.
Behind the knees, no pad of yellow fat.
What it knew in the morning it still believed at nightfall.
An unconjured confidence lifted its eyebrows, its cheeks.

The longing has not diminished.
Still it understands. It is time to consider a cat,
the cultivation of African violets or flowering cactus.

Yes, it decides:
Many miniature cacti, in blue and red painted pots.
When it finds itself disquieted
by the pure and unfamiliar silence of its new life,
it will touch them—one, then another—
with a single finger outstretched like a tiny flame.

Lake Echo, Dear || C. D Wright

Is the woman in the pool of light

really reading or just staring

at what is written

Is the man walking in the soft rain

naked or is it the rain

that makes his shirt transparent

The boy in the iron cot

is he asleep or still

fingering the springs underneath

Did you honestly believe

three lives could be complete

The bottle of green liquid

on the sill is it real

The bottle on the peeling sill

is it filled with green

Or is the liquid an illusion

of fullness

How summer’s children turn

into fish and rain softens men

How the elements of summer

nights bid us to get down with each other

on the unplaned floor

And this feels painfully beautiful

whether or not

it will change the world one drop

--


This is personally an underrated poem. Th majority of the parts bring you to explore about consciousness and your relationship with the world, while  the ending summarizes what means most about life--and that's to experience. But not just any ordinary experience, Wright is talking about a very intimate and sentimental experience one merely discovers while living. It makes you value what is now and what we can be conscious of, no matter where it exists and when.

The First Dream || Billy Collins

The Wind is ghosting around the house tonight
and as I lean against the door of sleep
I begin to think about the first person to dream,
how quiet he must have seemed the next morning

as the others stood around the fire
draped in the skins of animals
talking to each other only in vowels,
for this was long before the invention of consonants.

He might have gone off by himself to sit
on a rock and look into the mist of a lake
as he tried to tell himself what had happened,
how he had gone somewhere without going,

how he had put his arms around the neck
of a beast that the others could touch
only after they had killed it with stones,
how he felt its breath on his bare neck.

Then again, the first dream could have come
to a woman, though she would behave,
I suppose, much the same way,
moving off by herself to be alone near water,

except that the curve of her young shoulders
and the tilt of her downcast head
would make her appear to be terribly alone,
and if you were there to notice this,

you might have gone down as the first person
to ever fall in love with the sadness of another.


--


I was once very fond of this poem, and maybe in another time I'll find out I still am, but this style of Billy Collins really influenced most of the recent writings. The way he invites the audience to travel with his metaphor, or imagery creates a flat ground of understanding. There is no confusion to how his poems must be interpreted and aesthetic experience that comes along reading his work is a very significant realization.

The Arm || Stephen Dunn

A doll's pink, broken-off arm
was floating in a pond
a man had come to with his dog.
The arm had no sad child nearby
to say it was hers, no parent to rescue it
with a stick or branch,

and this pleased the man to whom
absence always felt like opportunity.
He imagined a girl furious
at her younger sister, taking it out on her
one limb at a time.

Yet the sun was glancing off
the arm's little pink fingers,
and the pond's heart-shaped lily pads
seemed to accentuate an oddness,
which he thought beautiful.

When he and the dog looked for
the doll's body but couldn't find it,
a different image came to him,
of a father who hated the fact
that his son liked dolls.
What was floating there

was a punishment that didn't work,
for the boy had come to love
his one-armed doll even more.
Once again the man was struck
by how much misery
the human spirit can absorb.

His dog wanted to move on,
enough of this already.
But the man was creating little waves
with his hands, and the arm, this thing
his wife was sure to question,
was slowly bobbing toward him.

--

This is a perfect example of what poetry has taught me greatly. It is reflecting on simple things and moments that you observe. You may notice an object minding its own business which most people tend to ignore, but a poet like the speaker of this poem has a natural element in his well-being to ask oneself why the object is there, where it came from, what is its story? And here, the agent is allowed to be imaginative and to reflect as if the moment was somewhat surreal that he owns its backward story. And I love this kind of experience and feeling because I love story telling and making up sentiments not existent to my own or detached from what we call real.

somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond || ee cummings

somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands


--

a poem that belongs in my heart from years ago and years to come. has inspired another personal poem that was full of platonic and romantic love. a memo that was sung day and night. whenever love enters me, this song is both alive and free. like a leaf falling from a tree, or a feather swept by the wind at sea. this poem belong with me, in me, from me.

7:01am

after Shane Koyczan


But your kiss, my dear,
is an ignorant virus
that pollutes itself

to every nerve of my body;
violently entering each cell
like a prison guard.
And when you think

that your travelling lips

are pattering
little pebbles of love

on the shore of our marriage,
they leave nothing but
open wounds,
longing to be nursed
by someone else.

--


A response to Shane Koyczan’s “6:59am”


When: May 21, 2011
Where: Home

Arrival || Cyril Wong

During our first few dates, we
scribbled our confessions on paper,

sending them like fast-forward
letters back and forth across the table.

Then you relented and taught me sign-
language, demonstrating how "like"

is the drawing forth of an invisible
string from the centre of your chest

like a loosened thread, freed from
the constraining fabric of your body,

while "love" is the crossing of
both arms in an act of self-defence

and a warning, or simply that "X"
which marks the point of arrival

upon the very treasure map of you.

--

Simple but effective. It makes for good poetic conversation that I have yet to try but eager to practice.

Things my son should know after I've died || Brian Trimboli

I was young once. I dug holes
near a canal and almost drowned.
I filled notebooks with words
as carefully as a hunter loads his shotgun.
I had a father also, and I came second to an addiction.
I spent a summer swallowing seeds
and nothing ever grew in my stomach.
Every woman I kissed,
I kissed as if I loved her.
My left and right hands were rivals.
After I hit puberty, I was kicked out of my parents’ house
at least twice a year. No matter when you receive this
there was music playing now.
Your grandfather isn’t
my father. I chose to do something with my life
that I knew I could fail at.
I spent my whole life walking
and hid such colorful wings.

--


I think writing a poem like this one is a good writing exercise. Not to mention that it has its therapeautic gains. I like the frankness of this poem, and how it hid and revealed slowly the speaker's sentiments.

Flowers || Margaret Atwood

Right now I am the flower girl.
I bring fresh flowers,
dump out the old ones, the greenish water
that smells like dirty teeth
into the bathroom sink, snip off the stem ends
with surgical scissors I borrowed
from the nursing station,
put them into a jar
I brought from home, because they don't have vases
in this hotel for the ill,
place them on the table beside my father
where he can't see them
because he won't open his eyes.

He lies flattened under the white sheet.
He says he is on a ship,
and I can see it--
the functional white walls, the minimal windows,
the little bells, the rubbery footsteps of strangers,
the whispering all around
of the air-conditioner, or else the ocean,
and he is on a ship;
he's giving us up, giving up everything
but the breath going in
and out of his diminished body;
minute by minute he's sailing slowly away,
away from us and our waving hands
that do not wave.

The women come in, two of them, in blue;
it's no use being kind, in here,
if you don't have hands like theirs--
large and capable, the hands
of plump muscular angels,
the ones that blow trumpets and lift swords.
They shift him carefully, tuck in the corners.
It hurts, but as little as possible.
Pain is their lore. The rest of us
are helpless amateurs.

A suffering you can neither cure nor enter--
there are worse things, but not many.
After a while it makes us impatient.
Can't we do anything but feel sorry?

I sit there, watching the flowers
in their pickle jar. He is asleep, or not.
I think: He looks like a turtle.
Or: He looks erased.
But somewhere in there, at the far end of the tunnel
of pain and forgetting he's trapped in
is the same father I knew before,
the one who carried the green canoe
over the portage, the painter trailing,
myself with the fishing rods, slipping
on the wet boulders and slapping flies.
That was the last time we went there.

There will be a last time for this also,
bringing cut flowers to this white room.
Sooner or later I too
will have to give everything up,
even the sorrow that comes with these flowers,
even the anger,
even the memory of how I brought them
from a garden I will no longer have by then,
and put them beside my dying father,
hoping I could still save him.

--


I think this poem shows very well how good of a story-teller Margaret Atwood is. She can think of a reflection on certain ordinary events and make them wake the most passive consciousness.

he's giving us up, giving up everything
but the breath going in
and out of his diminished body;
minute by minute he's sailing slowly away,
away from us and our waving hands
that do not wave.

It's a sad thing to lose someone close much more the thoughts that haunt you unwillingly knowing their time is near. No matter how you read this: naturally, literally, figuratively, etc.

even the memory of how I brought them
from a garden I will no longer have by then,
and put them beside my dying father,
hoping I could still save him.

She gives grappling and creative endings as usual. The reflection here is what amazes me even more.

Why it Often Rains in the Movies || Lawrence Raab

Because so much consequential thinking
happens in the rain. A steady mist
to recall departures, a bitter downpour
for betrayal. As if the first thing
a man wants to do when he learns his wife
is sleeping with his best friend, and has been
for years, the very first thing
is not to make a drink, and drink it,
and make another, but to walk outside
into bad weather. It's true
that the way we look doesn't always
reveal our feelings. Which is a problem
for the movies. And why somebody has to smash
a mirror, for example, to show he's angry
and full of self-hate, whereas actual people
rarely do this. And rarely sit on benches
in the pouring rain to weep. Is he wondering
why he didn't see it long ago? Is he wondering
if in fact he did, and lied to himself?
And perhaps she also saw the many ways
he'd allowed himself to be deceived. In this city
it will rain all night. So the three of them
return to their houses, and the wife
and her lover go upstairs to bed
while the husband takes a small black pistol
from a drawer, turns it over in his hands,
then puts it back. Thus demonstrating
his inability to respond to passion
with passion. But we don't want him
to shoot his wife, or his friend, or himself.
And we've begun to suspect
that none of this is going to work out,
that we'll leave the theater feeling
vaguely cheated, just as the movie,
turning away from the husband's sorrow,
leaves him to be a man who must continue,
day after day, to walk outside into the rain,
outside and back again, since now there can be
nowhere in this world for him to rest.

--

Lawrence Raab has a way of narrating true events we never notice nor even bother think about in his poetry. And it is all so true how a simple rain can speak for the silent person within, and it is also astonishing how poetry has its way of waking our consciousness to such mundane situations for the public eye, and be awake enough to know they all matter.

It's true that the way we look doesn't always
reveal our feelings.

And this speaks for me this past week. We must understand.

From an Atlas of a Different World || Adrienne Rich

I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plains' enormous spaces around you.
I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight
but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem
as the underground train loses momentum and before running
up the stairs
toward a new kind of love
your life has never allowed.
I know you are reading this poem by the light
of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide
while you wait for the newscast from the intifada.
I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room
of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.
I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,
count themselves out, at too early an age. I know
you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick
lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on
because even the alphabet is precious.
I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove
warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your
hand
because life is short and you too are thirsty.
I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language
guessing at some words while others keep you reading
and I want to know which words they are.
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn
between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else
left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are.

--

I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room
of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.

The poem does not only make the author omniscient or omnipresent, nor does it simply makes the author identify herself as one belonging to a single genre--where her readers are that of one sentimentality. No, the poem takes you everywhere, it brings you along with it as it travel boundaries, experiences and moments; all of which from people who may be similar or different from you, yet you and those people reading the same poem are united in one entity. We experience genuine and similar things but the experiences that we gather from them makes them very special and unique.

I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn
between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.

This is probably how I feel right now, together with a million people, shackled to the body when the mind swims freely in the wind.

The God Who Loves You || Carl Dennis

It must be troubling for the god who loves you
To ponder how much happier you’d be today
Had you been able to glimpse your many futures.
It must be painful for him to watch you on Friday evenings
Driving home from the office, content with your week—
Three fine houses sold to deserving families—
Knowing as he does exactly what would have happened
Had you gone to your second choice for college,
Knowing the roommate you’d have been allotted
Whose ardent opinions on painting and music
Would have kindled in you a lifelong passion.
A life thirty points above the life you’re living
On any scale of satisfaction. And every point
A thorn in the side of the god who loves you.
You don’t want that, a large-souled man like you
Who tries to withhold from your wife the day’s disappointments
So she can save her empathy for the children.
And would you want this god to compare your wife
With the woman you were destined to meet on the other campus?
It hurts you to think of him ranking the conversation
You’d have enjoyed over there higher in insight
Than the conversation you’re used to.
And think how this loving god would feel
Knowing that the man next in line for your wife
Would have pleased her more than you ever will
Even on your best days, when you really try.
Can you sleep at night believing a god like that
Is pacing his cloudy bedroom, harassed by alternatives
You’re spared by ignorance? The difference between what is
And what could have been will remain alive for him
Even after you cease existing, after you catch a chill
Running out in the snow for the morning paper,
Losing eleven years that the god who loves you
Will feel compelled to imagine scene by scene
Unless you come to the rescue by imagining him
No wiser than you are, no god at all, only a friend
No closer than the actual friend you made at college,
The one you haven’t written in months. Sit down tonight
And write him about the life you can talk about
With a claim to authority, the life you’ve witnessed,
Which for all you know is the life you’ve chosen.

--


The ending itself felt closer to my own interpretation. There is no god but your own consciousness, and in fact, the numerous alternatives should hurt you more than any concrete or abstract entity; let it be a family friend, or a regretful memory.

You’re spared by ignorance? The difference between what is
And what could have been will remain alive for him
Even after you cease existing,

There's a thin line between amor fati and regret.