Whisked away

It saddens me to think of all the words I should have written down that I had let go of, instead. The absoluteness of their loss weighs down on me like some long-forgotten heartbreak that has come back and refuses to go away.

What wind, which wind, I wonder, had carried them off, and where to?

And what about the journals I had misplaced, or may have thrown away out of some sort of anger I may have felt that time, what of the many manuscripts I had written, in longhand, typed and edited and re-typed, and then lost? What of them? What of the sleep given up just so the words could be strung together, just so the lines could be worthy, at all, of touching the whiteness of paper?

And what of the aches so deliberately recalled, what of the joys so painstakingly pinned down, labored over so they could be just as real on the page?