Exile

I spent a long time wondering if I would be the
price that you chose to pay for your brand of
honesty, if there was enough of me left to make
that payment yet again-

Bemused by the fact that the definitions you lived
by so greatly differed from those the rest of the
world reads.

"Friend" was something more and something
less than "lover" as the whim took you.

"Love" was something to be found only in the unknown,
something to be lost as soon as the new wore off.

"Drama" was something to decry even as your own hand created it.

"Honesty" was a coin held tightly in the fist, spent only sparingly.

"Truth" was an image on canvas created for each person you showed it to, crafted for the means of the moment, rather than from reality.

Maybe it's because words weren't your media, because you created with a language based solely in emotions, slippery and transitory as they were, that you felt you could defy explanation or definition.

But that left you a ghost in the real world, a shadow in any life you chose to walk in.

The unreal given fair form, a voluntary insanity in those of us who welcomed you into our lives.

A self chosen exile in the Land of Life, living at the whim of others.