It hurts when you realize
the people that you love
have changed, or perhaps
it’s you that has become
someone different, almost
a complete stranger to yourself.

But that is what happens in life,
things change, and you can either
dwell on the past, like staring at a
tattered photograph, tears welling up
in your distant eyes, wondering if you
could pin-point the exact moment things
began to change, when the person you
knew so well became a fading memory.
Or you can accept that your lives have
slowly drifted apart, and hold those moments
you shared close to your heart,
but the latter somehow seems so much
more difficult to fathom,
now doesn’t it?

I believe it is because as people we
struggle to accept change, only when
it is unwanted, of course.
It’s strange to image how one would
simply fall out of love, but we have all
felt that hurt, that twisting pain, the
growing blackness within our chest,
the one that cuts your breathing short,
and eliminates hunger, confides you to
those linen cotton monsters, wrapping
their selfish claws around your flesh.
We can’t image the thought of the one
we love the most, waking up and realizing
they have changed, and somehow they get up,
and walk away.

But I imagine people are like stars,
burning, shining together, perhaps
only for a short moment in time, but
that moment stays with us, longer than
we would like to admit.
And to be honest, if I were a star,
I shined my brightest with you.