We used to write names on small pieces of torn manila paper. We would write the names with our souls. Dotting our little i's with small globs of passion, curving each O with angst and fear and hope, spelling each letter of the first and the middle and the last with sadness, grief and tattered glory. When there were no names left to write, we would think really very hard about the names we had just written. Then, we would light the matches. The matches would strike, the flame would glow, and one name at a time we would say all the right reasons these names deserved to burn. And one at a time, all the pain and suffering would disappear. The embers of the paper would glow as the names disappeared, and our hearts would fire up and once we could feel the heat reaching our fingertips we would let go, and the names that once consumed us would disappear into ashes, blowing into the wind far far away. And once the lingering smell of the smoke was gone, we would forget about these names and their burdens forever.

But when I got to your name, I held the torn paper in my palm. I tried to think of all the right reasons to burn it away. But I couldn't. So I folded it up, and put it in my pocket.

the only reason i keep on coming home

That's the thing about us. We were all so full of passion. From the moment we arrived, each of us had sold a little part of our hearts to something, to anything that made us feel like we could rule the world. When we weren't doing whatever it was that made us most whole, we were thinking about it or dreaming about it or looking for more of it, breathing it in and out like obsessed fools. We were thinkers, dreamers, and searchers who had nearly found the golden ticket, clinging to it before it was lost to someone else.

We were passionate, and we were passionate together. We put ourselves out on the table, and subjected ourselves to the most critical of critiques. But we held each other up, giving each other both the confidence to succeed and the fear of failure; we held each other by the wrists as each of us dangled off the ledge of risk.

And when we left, we still held on to those passions that we embraced so fondly. From the smallest and seemingly most insignificant of passions to the dramatized and exploited wonders of passions, we kept them in our hearts and in our minds. We never let go. We made our passions even more passionate, and are developing kingdoms on our passionate foundations of curiosity.

And this is how we still hold on to each other. Through the possession of these passions, we will always remember how passionate we were together, as a large-scale family striving to leap as far as we could without holding each other back.