At times, I wonder if I am to be an inheritor of so many beautiful memories. Beautiful, and yet that is what they all are, just memories, bits and scraps and crumbs that could never make a whole, that could never satisfy the hunger. Memories, only memories, colorful and soft pieces and shapes that time could easily crumble, grind to dust or distorted by the forces of longing and wanting and loneliness that feeds on its own self.

At times I wonder if the greatness of my poetry would demand the highest price out of me, a mere mortal, and a man as such. I wonder if that, for my poetry to remain and be remembered and be kept so close to the chest of those who need them and find solace in them, I, the poet who is first a man, would have to be away from a woman. Until the moment my eyes would shut their windows one last time, until the moment my breaths would forever be lost to me.

Will that be the price that I have to risk paying, that I would be remembered and kept in so many pages of memories because of my poetry, and never to be taken as the man with all of my fears and shame and tears?

I wonder if I have to lose the love of women from where I gathered my purest and strongest ideals, the love of women who is the earth, sky, sea and air since the moment I claimed my own space in this universe.

Where do I begin of how the love of women flowed into the arid wasteland of my soul, bringing its elements that seeds long since buried by ashes of my life sprouted and broke through the surface to bask under the warmth and caress of the endless fingers of the sun, seeds who bore flowers and fruits and scents that pervaded the most silent and cold of nights, leaves swaying to the music of the night, resting until the sun would rise again? The years have been full of it, and I would not be foolish enough to attempt telling you in a few words, when I know that no words could ever suffice.

But perhaps I could tell you that somehow that, with regards to the flow of the waters of love into my former wasteland turned garden, the end had already began. And perhaps I was a fool indeed, blinding my own eyes and soul to the inevitable.

The land is dry. My eyes do not shed tears as they used to.

I miss my tears. Whenever they burst from the lake of my eyes and flow downward through the hill of my nose, and into the cave of my mouth where my tongue soaks in them, it reminds me that I am still human, and warm. The taste of fluid salt reminds me that I know the taste of sugar because I have tasted salt.

I wonder. Perhaps I should not wonder at all. For however or whatever it may be, I am willing to pay the price, risk everything in the name of my poetry. My poetry is all that I have, and my poetry is me.

It would have been beautiful, and I would have been willing to pay my poetry as the ultimate price and sacrifice if only I would have one love.

It would have been beautiful.