The Things That Stay. Poem by Leah Ayliffe

Maybe there was nothing there, nothing left.
Maybe it shouldn't be talked about. No want of words to surround it, to bring it back to life on the presents horizon.
The past to stay behind, like it wasn't in every whispered breeze that passes through the streets, moving us forward, forgotten child.
As it rains, dancing around the walls called home,
I think I know better than yesterday.
I know how coffee and rock n' roll are the kind of things that stay.

I've been travelling, sleeping in places I don't know.
I've been drinking all night with strangers that are something like real friends, more real than the ones from long before.
Fairy lights, cocaine eyes, dancing to Spanish songs.
I won't pretend that I didn't dream you'd be better, that you'd be who you were when we were different people. Well we were different people.
Yet, those nights I was happy to be alone in the crowd, surrounded by everyone. I felt like I belonged.

Falling in love again, deeply in love with the whole world. My greatest love story is life itself, my life which I adore in it's best and most melancholy days.
Falling in love again, getting to rediscover exactly who I am and have become. Falling ever so deep remembering the magic in my own soul.

Back here, sitting at the dining table,
an old familiar place where my thoughts have spiraled and looped throughout the years. Where I would look out the window, drowning in reflection staring at the turquoise pool.
Now, it seems I have cured this sickness called nostalgia, the fragile hopes of past things lingering.
Yes, I feel no need to talk about those things. I don't want to waste my mind, my breath, chasing how it used to be by trying to keep it in today.
Today is different.
Today I am acutely aware of the gorgeous things that stay.
Coffee and rock n' roll, dancing barefoot on kitchen floors.
How the trees, the sky, and the paths sing to come play. How the world will always call on you to explore it's divine secrets.

Me. Me. All to myself I stay.

A liberating sigh of relief, a breath of new beginnings, because before you, it was always me who'd leave anyway.