To be as you wish.

If you knew me before this month, please take a strainer to your memories of who I was and make sure you only let the parts of me that made you smile pour through the holes and whatever sticks in the strainer as negative bury it under concrete. I am. 

The other night I burned a list I made of all the qualities in myself I never want to let be a part of me again and a list of lies I told the people I should have loved more. I sat barefoot on a square of slate...perched...squatting, like a gargoyle on the fronts of my toes, leaning over the fire and letting myself feel everything. I Watched that thick paper start to turn to embers and allowed my face to brush up against the smoke. As I let the smoke edge around my face I let go of all the parts of me I can no longer face in the mirror. "Just get through this" I murmured. I made sure everytime my mind tried to escape from the density of the moment that I brought it back to face every bit of pain I was needing to let go. As I wiped my face clear of the first wave of tears I dragged deep on my cigarette and used the butt end of my red lighter to scoop a hole out from the dirt in the garden. I pushed the ashes of my worst self  into the hole and packed the dirt on tight, watering whatever might grow there with the saline reality falling out of my facial ducts. I then pulled the slate over it as a little headstone and looked up into the starry night and promised without saying a thing to whoever was listening,god,the neighbors,an earthworm, that I was never going to be the type of man that I was previously allowing myself to become.  The release was gigantic.  I turned around and there was my brother, watching me the whole time.  He had been so silent, so respectful of the moment. I pushed my cigarette down into the small ashtray at the top of the stairs back into the kitchen and without saying a word we both walked inside.