Time stands still in certain places, where
The remnants of old glory days
Settle in and make it feel as if the world
Is moving forward,
But you, caught here by memory or by love,
Go nowhere at all.

You think,
This is this the place that turned you into what you are,
Wanted,
By so many people that over the years,
The faces have blurred,
And you, for all you want to understand,

Can only hope to keep yourself afloat,
Your head above
The water that only seems to rise with every choice you make.
There have been a lot of those,
But certainly no question of dedication,
Or of loyalty,

Whatever it means, to you,
To those who
Have it in their hands to send you on your way,
Or keep you here.
They say, the decision is yours, but
It does nothing to lessen the burden

Of making up your mind; of taking that first step
In a new direction.
Time stands still in certain places,
Much like this one, where
You think of days gone by and know
Those days will not return,

And you are not as young as you once were.

maybe you have always known it,
that to come here meant to stay,
for as long as it took to realize that perhaps,
you are not as young as you think you are,
not anymore; that
one day the skies will meet the horizon

and you will watch and know,
you've done all you came here for,
breathed life into something left by the wayside,
forgotten. but no.
they will not forget;
you will not let them.

you want to ask,
what happens, when it fades?
when a smile leaves someone's eyes, and
you know why because
it's left yours, too? what can you say when,
lost as you are,
you're no longer sure that
anyone is listening?

It used to be that you could fill a room just by
    Being there;
    That whatever was on your mind came
    Flying out, as if
    There wasn't enough room inside your head
    For it to stay.

    There is a difference between being untouchable
    And unbreakable.
    It is a startling thing, when it hits that you are neither,
    But that someone wished for you to be at least the one.
   

I could write a hundred thousand words,
    And it still wouldn't be enough to tell what little I know.
    I could say in any language what it feels like when
    Your heart drops to the soles of your feet,
    Then rises to your throat; how hard it is to hold back tears,
    To even entertain such thoughts as the ones that cross your mind,
    When you realize things don't always turn out the way you want them.
    How easy it is to lose your faith
    In the wake of your heart breaking.

    The first time I watched you walk away from me,
    You kept your head up, like it was an impossible thing to
    Stare at the ground, acknowledge defeat.
    I couldn't admit that I admired it,
    But I wanted to.

If the butterfly flaps its wings twice in an instant,
Unnoticed but for the way it flits from place to place
Never settling for long,
Then what does it mean when, finally,
It finds the place it can call home?

They say that home is where you love,
Where your feet may leave,
But not your heart.
And no matter where the world takes you,
It is always where you will return.

Is it, then, a place,
Marked on the map, ordinary,
For anyone to find?
Or is it something else entirely; the parts that only you can see,
The parts you know that no one else does?

The butterfly lands where fate means to tip its hand,
Which is to say for someone who is drifting,
Somewhere he has never been.
If it flaps its wings twice in an instant,
No one sees but the blind hand of that fate, leading on,

And into the unknown;
Territory uncharted, in a city that sits above so many others,
Where the air grows thinner with every step he takes,
Until he cannot breathe but for hoping that somehow,
It will come to mean something,

Years later,
You don't remember all you'd thought,
On the day you landed.
What you do remember is wondering
How long it would last,
Before you changed your mind, decided
This wasn't where you wanted to be?

But that had been then,
A different time from now,
Where you've spent the time
Chasing after dreams that have been yours
Since the minute you got here.
And it's funny, you think, now,
How quickly time passes,

How quickly it turns into
Half your life, in the blink of an eye,
Like all you did was turn around,
And suddenly, you're here,
Standing at a crossroads that
Just yesterday, had been a long time coming,
Not even a thought in the back of your mind.

If dreams are meant to be
A sign of the future,
Then what does it mean,
When one continues to dream;
To fall into that place between sleeping and waking,
Where they see
All the things they could have ever wanted,

There, within reach?
If dreams are hopes for the future, tucked away,
What becomes of those that turn real?
The butterfly flaps its wings in concrete jungles made in places where
Dreams become reality much easier than they do, here,
Where gray skies match the steel that's built this city,
A force to be reckoned with, perhaps.

But no more than the expectations set forth,
Invisible, but still there.
A guideline of sorts, perhaps,
To tell the child where he ought to be,
If anywhere at all.
He thinks, watching from benches that only get shorter every day,
That if he was meant to be nowhere,

He would be.
But this is not nowhere:
And certainly not the empty space he sees some nights,
When doubts take over and he believes that this place,
This city made of metal
Is where he belongs.

If the butterfly flaps its wings in such a place
Where the streets are never sleeping; where
Bright lights hide the bruises and
Hold the hopes of those who wait,
For fate to show its hand,
Then it does so, too, in such a place

Where the streets are as gray
As winter skies, and the skyline itself
Only towers higher than one can see,
Set against itself, for the odds
Have been this way since the beginning,
Long before this child came to be.

Here, perhaps, is where the odds are set against him,
Like the city he is born to,
With her glittering arms,
Wide open but unreachable, for someone who
Does not yet understand all that it means.

The fates have seen fit to do stranger things than this:
Piecing together what otherwise may never have come to be,
Like the air that fits everywhere,
Unseen, but present still;
That which appears to be empty is, in truth,
Completely full,

But no one knows it.

If the pieces fit where they ought to,
Then it only makes sense that what follows is
What cannot be broken,
By time, by circumstance,
Unwillingness, reluctance.

Perhaps if there was a choice, if it could be decided upon, it would be different.

There is no choice;
Only the spark,
The one that only exists, at first,
As a break in the bend,
Unexpected,
Lit by something as easy as a look, a touch,
A whisper spoken on the wind.

Easy, you think, to lose yourself to something you don't understand.