Heaven, when i held you again

Past

Now, as i lay awake, i find myself wandering back to the times i was most at peace.

I am taken back to the hazy, sunlit room, cast in a golden hue. The light so fine it captured all the drifting specks of dust, illuminated in the air. Where i sat, the heavy summer heat cast onto my shoulders, I had felt like a celestial being, bathed in the golden glory. Perhaps i was an angel, the stream of light through the window cast a halo around my head. Around me- a being cast down from the ethereal heavens for falling in love with mortal transience. Or maybe i was Atlas. The weight of intelligence, of consciousness, a burning weight thrust onto my shoulders. Gradually the weight grew heavier as my body started to give in. Harmoniously, I felt my knees relax, legs slack and eyelids shut as my head found closure in the hollow of my arms, and my mind numbed over. A gentle voice, the last thing i heard, guided me through the symphony.

The unceremonial clashes of seats to tables had jolted me back into reality. Eyes widening, I realised my situation. I had fallen asleep again, and possibly lost many chunks of history, now forever unbeknownst to me. Not only that, but I would probably have to scrape together another 5/10 on the next essay we'd write for homework.

Yet as I sat up, i felt strangely calm. History is history for a reason. The whole point was not to be caught up in the pasts mistakes. But since i had gone to sleep into the early hours of the morning several times that week, I suppose this was a fault i kept falling victim to, and might aswell live alongside it. History seemed to be the only lesson where I could spend making up for lost hours in peace.
I smiled at this thought.
But unwittingly caught your eyes there, as you stood before the whiteboard, a lessons notes now illegible to me, before you flashed me a knowing smirk.

I don't remember exactly what you said. I wish i could but happy moments in the past never remained in my memory for long, before becoming buried by the bad.
If i could, i wouldve taken the equivalent of a screenshot. Mentally freezing the picture before the waves of time washed it away. Wiping the past, my history, our history further away by the moment.
And new moments. The past is replaced by recent pasts until the segment is lost forever. There will be no indication such a thing happened. That such a thing once caused joy. If not for human memory, that moment would be lost forever. Only you and I would be the ones to recall.

Perhaps you have forgotten already. Perhaps your memory is still unrelenting. If you forget me in that moment, turn back. You have gone too far.
Perhaps that is why you study history.

To preserve the past within human memory. To grant ourselves the ability to recall the magnitude of such events that brought you and me together, as well as drive us apart. The butterfly effect. It is due to every decision, every action and reaction we made that brought us together to this point.
Do you regret that? Now as i reflect back to what was going on in your life, i understand that at that point you quite possibly did have many regrets.
As to live as a man you don countless masks throughout the course of a lifetime, and a lifeline on the verge of collapse required the thickest and most emotionless one you held in possession.

In history, you tell his-story. Whether it be the ruthless figure, seizing control over every last scrap of land within his reach. Or the successors, all men that follow, scrambling to withhold and bear the weight of such a legacy.
A man, at the pinnacle of influence, struck down by a hopeless war.
Or his story. The story of the boy who would never reach adulthood.
The one no quantity of love could ever save, to stop the draining of the essence of life, brought on by the river of time. You watched this all happen before you, willing for time to slow down, running an endless, uphill sprint. Try as you wish, no matter how many moments you spend with him, living, you know that there comes a time where you return home to everything him, except himself. Where his story ends, and he himself becomes history.