This Time

For many years, I searched for you but could not find where you were hiding,

In the shadows, where my deepest secrets are buried I looked, you were not there.



Are you in the box where all the pain and sorrow has been locked away for years?

Could you be in the pictures of a long buried past erased but not forgotten?



Are you hiding in a mind where reality has been replaced with blurred dreams?

Where anger and resentment have taken over and clouded reason and sanity,



Leaving behind an empty shell, mirroring only remnants of a past regretted?

Then, one day, there was a fleeting moment, a glimpse of you and I chased you,



Deep into the recesses of a life I had long ago chosen to bury, I found you.

Hiding from me, I held on and could not let you flee my reaching arms again.



I’ve locked you in a newness created, where happiness and laughter sustain me,

Where sorrow is forbidden, pain takes no foothold and memories are steps taken.



Rungs I’ve climbed, challenges conquered, the battles I've won, brought peace.

You are me, you are beautiful, and this time you will stay.