There was a time when I was younger to catch a dream I’d often hunger.

Then came a day I met a girl. I became convinced she could complete my world.

Instead of a chance for her and I, she gracefully passed me by.

My heart was wounded. A mist hazed my eyes, seeing my dream being denied.

Courtships came and courtships went. Soon I discovered an angel, Heaven sent.

Together we knew we would always stay, until on a cold March evening she bravely passed away.

My heart was shattered, so many tears I could not hide; feeling our dreams crushed and denied.

Its been many years since that chilly Indiana night and I’m still trying to tell myself that everything is going to be alright.

But I know deep down in my heart if she still had her say, she’d tell me to keep chasing my dream and it’ll be okay.

Her cousin told me that a young lady I will call Princess was in a hospital. The doctors had discovered a cancerous tumor the size of a golf ball in her brain. They said it had been there since her birth. It made me sad because I really liked her a lot.

Later that night I went to a bar. During the live band’s break my best friend Andy, the front man of the band came over to my table grabbed my camera, snapped a photo of me and then sat down. A sexy girl that had been sitting directly behind me walked over and sat down at our table. She was wearing leather and looking so hot. I hardly knew anything about her at the time, other than her name and her bad reputation. She was only nineteen and got into the bar with a fake ID card.

Twenty-three years later she would become my first wife, but that’s a story for another day. On this night she had her sights set on Andy and outright told him in front of me that she would give him a blow job after the show. I was a bit jealous because he got all the girls. I walked home alone drunk as a skunk, kind of mad about it but started thinking about Princess and what her cousin had told me earlier that day. I screamed and prayed to God; “She is innocent. You said you have the power to heal, so do it and in return I promise to take care of her and provide for her. If I don’t, take my life but let her live”. Realizing the power of who I was talking to I changed “take my life” to “if I don’t, give me a miserable life”.

One evening, several weeks later while at work on a delivery I ran into Princess and asked for her phone number. Soon we began dating. One afternoon she came to visit and was crying about the cancer. I held her close, put my hand to the back of her head and silently prayed the same prayer that I had prayed the night I walked home drunk from the bar. When I was finished, she told me that she knew I had been praying for her just then. I asked her how she knew. She told me she felt electricity running throughout her entire body. She told me that she had only felt that once before when a preacher man touched her and prayed over her.

After that, on a following afternoon she returned to visit. She was quite joyful this time. I asked her why she was so happy. She told me that the cancer was gone. The doctors could not find a trace.

A lot of things happened during the next several months. I found myself quite popular with a select few ladies and while Princess still visited during the afternoons to go out to eat or to have me take her shopping; my morning, evenings and nights became adventurous without her.

Then it happened. The side chic from the night before decided she wasn’t going to leave and Princess and I had made plans for the morning. When Princess showed up right around schedule the other one had refused to leave and was still lying in my bed. The door was locked which threw up a major red flag. I unlocked the door and we went to leave in the car right away but then she turned and ran back towards the room. I caught up with her, she beat on my chest and told me she hated me. Princess ended up running off in tears. She wasn’t the only one left with a broken heart that day.

A week later some mutual friends contacted me and said that Princess wanted to talk at a nuetral location. I met her at the location and time requested. We had a long talk. She said she forgave me and she wanted me back but I knew things would never be like they were before. I told her I had chosen someone else and her last words to me that day were, “She’s gonna break your heart, just like you did to mine.”

The other one and I ended up getting a place of own together for a few months and in a heated moment I proposed to her. She said yes. For personal reasons concerning her child, we decided that the three of us should move out of state. I drove the entire eight hundred mile trip after storing all of my worldly possessions at her mothers’ home. Within a couple months my fiancee, for no known reason, left me stranded, eventually returned to her mothers and sold everything stored there that I had saved my entire life, including non replaceable things of sentimental value, such as things that my grandfather had left me. She also racked up eight hundred dollars worth of calls on my mother’s phone bill in the process.

I spent the next several months moving from hotel to hotel until I finally found a home I could afford. Once I got over the heartache and all the resentment that went with it, my mind began haunting me with memories of what used to be. I wrote a long letter to my former sweetheart that I had crushed ten months previously but things weren’t like they were before. Her response was “Of course I forgive you and I still love you but I told you so. There’s also something I must to tell you. About the cancer. It has returned. It is now in my abdomen. I’ve stopped all treatments because the pain is too much to bear. I’m putting it into God’s hands now but the doctors say I won’t live long, so if you want to see me, you better come soon.”

I had started a good job six months previous but immediately requested a thirty day leave of absence coinciding with the holidays. I came back on a Greyhound Bus practically broke so we didn’t do a lot but spend time together. She gave me a copy of a Christmas Eve edition of the local newspaper. The front page cover story was entitled ‘True Faith’. It had pictures of her along with the story of her discontinuing her therapy treatments.

A few days before I was to return she made reservations for three at a restaurant. Her best friend was with us. She had something to tell me and this is what she said. “You know I love you and I know you love me or you wouldn’t be here, but that’s not enough for me now. I need more. I need a reason to live. So please; I’m begging you. Even if you don’t really mean it, just tell me. Will you marry me? Tell me that you will marry me, please.” That is the moment I made a grave mistake and recklessly replied, “I do love you more than I love myself but I’m sorry, I can’t do that at this time.” In my mind she was strong enough on her own. She didn’t me to survive. She had more faith than anyone I had ever met.

So back to my faraway home I returned and a few weeks later on a cold March evening it took me by surprise when my mother called to tell me that my Princess had passed away and it was then I realized that I cherished her more than words could ever say.

The night of the walk home from the bar and the prayers that I had said would soon be all but entirely forgotten until nearly two decades later when I was made to realize that a covenant conjured had been left broken. It was only then that my entire life took dramatic turns for the worse.

Oh, can you see?

Oh, can you see?

This is not the real me

Motivation is lost

My desires have been tossed

Memories have got a stranglehold on me

Oh Lord please

Oh Lord please

Create some space for me to breathe

Give me hope

Give me love

Send me something from up above

I need peace

I need to be free

From all of this damn misery

So ease my pain

And help me sustain

This wretched life you blessed me

I used to be poetic but they’ve taken that away.

“You had me from the first hello. I love you; I need you. Please don’t ever let go.”

I said “I love you too and will never leave you”, then she had nothing nice to say.

Magical memories made. Then she wanders away.

“Your love is fake; it isn’t real. Get out of my life”

How is that supposed to make a man feel?

So friends we are but “stay off of my page. I don’t like you & I have nothing to say” are the only words I hear from a love once held so dear.

So here I sit, all alone. Feeling lost although I’m home.

Searching endlessly for the right words to say.

Licking my wounds to face another battle along the way.

“You’re weird. you’re boring”, keeps ringing in my ears.

Scared of the darkness. Scared of the light. No way to shake these endless fears.

Break a good man down; just to build another man up.

“You had me from the first hello. I love you; I need you. Please don’t ever let go.”

Magical memories made. Then she wanders away,

And there’s nothing left to say.

I walked into a kitchen. Sitting on the other side of the dining room table was my mother and to her left my grandmother; on her right end my grandfather and to his right my cousin. Next to my cousin was a chair pulled out and reserved for me. I sat and wondered why everyone was silent. They had somber looks on their faces as if something was troubling them. Then I realized that that they were all deceased so it must be a dream. If I had it to do over again, I'd had stayed in the dream and tried to communicate. As it was; for some reason, I just wanted out of the dream. I made myself wake up and as my eyes were opening I heard my mothers voice yell out the nickname only she used for me and said in a loud crystal clear voice "that woman is no good for you".

Be the decision maker and ruler of your own future. Do not allow others; no matter how near and dear to disrespect you, make you feel guilty, or manipulate you into changing what you have determined will make you happy, for their own selfish reasons. Throw away the excuses. Demand peace and harmony in your home, heart and life. Then you will no longer be a prisoner and things will be a whole lot easier once the dust settles.

Brown eyes of a young boy full of life

Revolving into an older man full of strife

A life full of dreams

Washed down the drain

Feeling pain

Feeling sorrow

Wishing for a new tomorrow

A shattered plan

Time waits for no man