Start out slow.  Build momentum.  Feel the rhythm.  Walking in a 
line you remember from some long ago footpath.  It was all your 
own.  Down alleys and through cobblestone streets.  Past iron 
gates and window sill rest stops for feline friends...lifting 
their heads at your passing, a momentary disturbance in the 
afternoon slumber...maybe all part of dizzy dream.  Maybe.

But you're here now.  Or was it last year?  Was it even you?  
Right here at the spot of your first kiss.  Can you remember 
your last?  Right outside the restaurant where you planted one 
on her.  The leftover diners getting a little floor show.  How 
many times has the place changed ownership and menus and decor?  
If you didn't know better, you'd wonder if this was even the spot.  

Time does little on its own.  It doesn't heal.  It does not give 
a thought to your passing.  Was that the table?  Catching your 
windowed reflection you laugh and realize it wasn't even you who 
sat there.  You're a ghost now, traveling through the shadows and 
making melancholy observations that serve to neither comfort or 
recall.  You're just killing time on an overcast afternoon in a 
city you no longer call home. 

Past another cat, sitting on the back steps of a cheap import 
shop.  And you are suddenly transported across the country to 
a morning walk you made a few weeks ago.  Heading to the train, 
on the way to work -- you usually take the bus but for some 
reason you braved the cold and hoofed it.  Looking down for no 
reason you'd swear it was sleeping but cats don't sleep next 
to sidewalks.  Looking so peaceful and helpless and alone.  But 
someone visited you in the night...and placed a blanket on your 
frozen body.  How did that feel?

Heading into the past.  They're giving underground tours.  
Selling tickets and pointing out all the buried points of 
interest.  Past the hawkers and forgotten souls.  Resurrecting 
the past in glossy, cheap imitation, cursory remembrance.  
Forging ahead into the decaying facade.  

But you're taking your own tour through the war torn terrain 
of your memory.  What a thing to do.  Just another shell-shocked 
DP making his way through the scattered debris, looking for some 
token souvenir to remind you of all the hopeless battles you 
survived...what were you hoping to gain...what have you lost 
forever? 

Skin and bones that made their way the best they could...older 
now.  Felt with every breath and every sudden movement.  Lines 
drawn for no particular reason.  Maybe you just wanted to see 
what lay on the other side.  Or maybe you just wanted something 
to look back on.  But that's not the way it works.  Now, is it?...

Searching the passing faces for an ounce of recognition.  Into 
the old haunts -- the ones that are still standing.  Only heightening 
the sense of removal.  No longer part of whatever it was that was 
happening here.  Long ago.  The changing of the guard took place 
when you were away and now you're a newcomer...a visitor...a passing 
shadow.  Doing your part and sparing the cornered regular your 
predictable tale...taking a lost look around and heading back 
into the fading day.

Isn't there some place you're supposed to be?