I look for friends that once I had

When the soul no longer corresponds to what was before… Became it corrupted? Or was it all an illusion?
When the virtue, that had once been offered, becomes in vice, who is the one to blame?
Shall we blame time? Time that, inexorable, sweeps away the memory of all the good in us? No, we shall not, since the soul is immutable.
Restless insane creatures, it is the flesh that consumes itself, in that fake spark of pleasure; they sell themselves when they had better save their own at any cost, because the day will come, when we are leaving this world, only if there’s no price tags in us any more; only if, from the beginning to the end, our steps have not led us too far from ourselves.
What the eyes know, masterpiece that the destiny looms; we do name it: “love”, “shelter”, and, as time goes by: “forgetfulness”.
People that go to separated ways while they wished to be nearer, it is just the farce of destiny; and it gets mellowed the face that we’ll never forget.
And then, did we wake up from the dream that we’ve built? Did we dream all that, did we think up the smiles?
Because they are another ones now, different from then, and we… we are the same. It doesn’t matter the time, we are the same here, by the other side, and the more we search for the same signs behind those ones who just returned, the less we recognize at least a single one; there is nothing there, lying in their troubled minds that used to believe themselves so clever, but that have been a one else, swept by ocean tides. Within this sea of bad weather and “cold-boiling” waters, the changing of the tides has been the only invariable thing, because time took away those who used to know me, one by one, bringing back the empty shells of the ones who I used to call “friend”.
No anchor was able to settle down your steps, and you have been carelessly taken to the other side, where no man has already sailed, a sea that just waited for those who were driven.
It took only an illusion chanting, by any mermaid, only a stronger wind; and there they went; they all left in a single movement, to return so spoiled and wasted; I cannot recognize anyone any more.
They used to be red-cheeked, they used to hold that bright in their eyes, they were brave… and they lost everything; their words seem to be only spilled now, thrown away at any time and, like the tides, they get any history that does not belong to the one that they so eagerly wished to write sunk and wrecked.
But they don’t dare to read the diary of their own misfortunes, because they have lived just by the miserable desire of finding happiness. And there is no bigger mistake than searching for the emptiness. They should have been filled before submitting at any price the greatest treasure that they held.
Buried in some island, the chest of their histories is; the words that used to be so beautiful, that used to sound across the huge uncharted plan, lie silent today, because they don’t dare to take them back, as long as they have been all sold.
I look for the friends that once I had like they were those precious lost treasures; but, without a map to guide me, I know… I’ll never find them again.

Anne Russel