What's up?

Please don't ask me that. When you raise your pen and gently roll its tip on the paper and circle the line "what's up?", then that's a question that needs to be answered. But my reply would be lost among the many hopeless hearts, aimlessly wandering in the dark night. So I keep it to myself, better to just whisper it when nobody can hear. "I'm doing all right, just confused sometimes."

There are lots of good plants growing, blooming, oozing their balsamic scents, sweetening the air around them. They are picked one by one. Torn from their stems, from the branches. They happily fall into the sack, then lay spread out on the canvas, waiting to be cut into exact pieces. They will dry and give their power from nature to someone who waits instant remedy. "We're herbs" and they're proudly singing with the birds. We're waiting for the hands to pick us from this tree. We want to travel in the sack, we want to be spread on the canvas, to be dried by the warm air of the attic and stay still in the cup and let the water dissolve all the goodness. We want to bring relief. I know.

"How has your day been?", but we used to walk past each other every single day. You remember what I have erased from my memory because it seemed unimportant. Now I'm faced with you and having to explain where you've disappeared to. I'm sorry, it all seemed too unimportant to record. Maybe if I had kept my eyes more open. Maybe if when I was 13 I could have been 25. Real importance rarely finds me in the now and regret travels much the same road as realisation does with me. If I was to write a poem, your name would be its title. Can that make up for the lost time? A piece of me has been lost to the endless history of childhood.

The story tells of a card that has traveled the world twice. It saw very little apart from the back of another card which read:
From
Mrs Jill Willows
34 Cone Drive
Surrough
OL2 6YF
Only when the light broke through the seams of the Royal Mail bag could the card read the exact address. It never learnt where that other card was heading. It was happy traveling by its side, in silence, in oblivion to when their journey together would end. That was a secret in their relationship neither felt needed to know. They lived for the now and knew that they were moving closer to their destination with every black second gone. The card felt proud of its poppies, bending in the wind on its front. Nobody but the recipient would see that. This made the card feel special, unmoved by the futility of its journey through the busy streets of the suburbs back to where it was posted from. It wanted its sender to quickly lick those naughty little stamps and affix them to its free corner so it could start its journey anew. "I'M TRAVELING THE WORLD" and with that enormous shout it fell into the bottom of yet another grey Royal Mail bag. It never stopped until it came home. My hands ripped the envelope and marvelled at the poppies on its front. It's home now, it arrived from home and traveled the world twice to see its brand new home.