How many things haunt me now? I am haunted by everything. Everything that I ever touched, some part of whatever soul they possessed left some sort of imprint on my character, some sort of mark upon my spirit. Everyone I ever knew, even a little: I carry the scent of their essence somewhere in the weariness of my mind. And those whom I’ve loved, I don’t know how it is that anyone ever stops loving anyone at all, for they still impart to me the promise they had back when, back when they first touched the soft corners of my heart. I dream about my past as if the past never ended; time has stopped in numerous places in my experiences, never to tick forward that they might slip away — all the memories never fade as much as I would have thought they might, in vain wondering, and time healed wounds only so far, and I forget nothing.

Even the things that never happened, the sorry I never said, the girl I did not have the courage to go up to — these, too, figure into the haunting. These nothings sometimes wake me up at night with their vacuum eyes, reminding me of things that never were, to look into the dread soul of the “only if”. The dreams that did not come to be, even though they could have, just that the chance slipped on by — what can a man do to fly from their faces? But with all these in mind… when I start to be of the notion that perhaps I should not have dreamed at all, then I know that I go down an enemy train of thought. For those who never lived, these are the ones that have no regret. Those who take the greatest chances are the ones that most agonize — and I think that I would rather have the pain than nothing. Let me make my mistakes. But let me do what I can.