The Collector: A Tale in Triplicate

I collect people.

There were ups and there were downs.
There was a shifting of roles.
Classmates. Lovers.
Then enemies.
And finally - Friends.
A mad genius.
Gifted, confident to a fault,
yet lost and lonesome more than he’d admit.
Driven by an insatiable need to prove himself to himself. A need stronger than any other. Stronger than our bond.
We ate sushi one night and spoke openly of our now evident mistakes, made during our 6 years of shared life.
For him I hope all the happiness I couldn’t seem to give him.
That is what I’ll never walk away from.

I collect people.

Bohemian soul to the core.
Frenzying, frazzled passion.
Survivor, struggle, attitude and angst.
She is not a white light but a pulsating purple vibrance.
We make blood orange martinis at her kitchen table in her underground flat
From oranges plucked rawly from a backyard tree.
We drank over 2-year-old catch-up conversation that felt as natural as if we’d never left off.
I feel I am closer to living when I am with her.
Hers is a voice I will do most anything to share.

I collect people.

He wanted to be a Rennaisance man. He wanted the world and all the experiences in it. It maddened him to near paralysis once that it seemed the world didn’t want him back.
I watch as life seems to implode within him. The beauty, the passion, the adventure – inside him yet out of reach.
A mirage in a desert
A treasure under glass
I see all the things he’s yet to do. Things he will do.
With strength, with belief, with full pockets and support.
3 years left now on a self-imposed Army sentence.
Seems a minefield of those implosion stretched between him and those million things.
Me be damned I don’t insist he be ready to change the world when it’s time.

I collect people.

I see where they’ve been. I see where they’re going. Better perhaps than they see it themselves.
We the artists. We the dreamers.
We live a Bootstraps Life.
A Persistence Life.
Of Human Strength.
We soldier on.
The Beautiful Endurance.

I collect people.

Whether they like it or not.
I put them on the hook, I will not let them off it.
And I will not let them forget who they once told me they were.