A study in Poetry

...Sometimes You Get What You Need

I don't know if this is a dream,

But my god, we did it.

We made it.

We're out of the city and out of the trenches. Out of hell.

After all the lonesome nights, all the awkward mornings,

After all the gunfire (that's it, I'm done with guns for good now),

After all the days walking on glass shards,

After all the bombshells and death,

It's time to go home.

No it's not perfect,

No, none of it's going to be perfect.

Just like it is for everyone, there's going to be challenges. That's life, crazy isn't it?

I don't think that's as crazy as what I'm about to write here in this journal,

As I finish it's last page and start another journal entirely.

It's been god knows how many months but I'm finally going home to my family. Alive.

I don't know how, but I've managed to get what I was looking for.

I won't say who, that's an announcement for another time.

I'm excited for the first day on the clock where stories are born.

I'm excited to come home... I never thought I'd say that word again... home.

I'm excited to play with the family under the oak tree in the garden we planted,

Behind the house.

It's changed the landscape a bit.

But it's for the better, everything just comes together and seems more well rounded now.

I think everything's going to be okay for us... whoever "us" is, I mean.

As crazy as it all is, this is the craziest of all:

As hard as it was,

As unclear the future was,

If I were given the chance, I'd go back and do it all over again. Even knowing what happens.

Every letter,

Every long night,

Every last night,

Every drive.

Every opportunity passed to runaway or have a happy accident,

Every dinner,

Every night at Friendly's,

Every dream shared and put on indefinite hold.

Even the things that happened before those days,

Further back,

Before I met, engaged, separated, and befriended my first.

Back when I was in my formative years, I think you're familiar with them, reader.

The early days in the west,

The years at the card tables,

The debts,

Even the ones I had to roses and vampires,

Who they themselves are out there, somewhere in that strange world of theirs.

I wonder if they remember that old room I lived in once upon a time,

The quiet one, with tides of memories clashing loudly.

So many memories, too many little stories to list here.

I'll have to leave them in a book somewhere,

Either as a monument to all my sins in the days laid to rest or for further study by the curious.

Biographies disguised as clever little fever dreams.

It can be our dirty little secret until the end of the era.

As it seems to be,

Out of hell,

Under the Oak tree,

Standing tall and proud.

Though I do have some regrets, there are some things I wish I could change.

But I don't know that they'd be for the better.

It's the hard times that make us who we are, they make us stronger.

Hell smells like shit for a reason: It's a helluva good fertilizer. Growth happens there.

But you gotta be your own person and bring the seed of your hopes with plenty determination.

I don't know if this is a dream but it sure feels like it,

At least when I wake up I know what I need to do,

So I can take action and take stock of what's important once again.

So I can grow to be the man, the husband, the father, I need to be for them as well as myself.

Whoever they may be.

So until the beginning and end blur together into something called "Until we meet again",

With this book of letters and stories in hand,

I'll see you in the trenches.

Unfaithfully yours,

- Joel Howlyn.