Poem: In Between Empires, Dreams
Here I stand surrounded by all I left in this place where love found me, and every part of my soul screams to return to the life I knew and loved— fantasy and obsession, running their course again though I know they get me nowhere, just a thousand what ifs, each a dead end, because the past is in the mirror, and Future is the game everyone’s playing so that no one’s really here or even there for that matter because places mean nothing without presence or people, and everyone everywhere just wants the same damn thing— the bankers and their wealth and the artists and their fame, chasing a happiness they’ll never attain, using others as stepping stones, as they dig their own graves in the hopeless promise of cities that glimmer with the Dream and her friends. I’m all for queens and kings but sometimes royalty comes with a price that can’t be paid. I did what I could to stay, and now I’ll do all I can to leave, recklessly longing for belonging in a world that doesn’t belong to me.
By Stephen Copeland
This poem was first published on copelandwrites.com.
