when did you become so fragile, dear friend, that a mere side glance can crumble your world? that a harsh word is all it takes to topple the dais of your pride? and what is that debilitating trepidation that seizes your heart at the memory of those mountain cliffs we once loved? do you not recall now the invincibility of youth, of those days when your heart knew no hesitation but only the adventure of discovery? have you forgotten the freshness of the streams we used to long for, a sanctuary hard reached after slipping down muddy trails and breaking through the thick bush of those endless ravines? were you afraid then? of the myriad small creatures that besieged us with curious eyes and greedy bellies? and did you tremble then at losing your way home, becoming lost forever? did you even have a conception of time in that verdant infancy of ours? behold now, what time has done to you: slain the intrepid explorer and made of you a mockery, an impostor filled with the terror of solitude and with cowering at the great big sky time has erased from you the reassuring stillness of the great eucalyptuses that in your tender years enchanted you with their peeling barks, their perfumes of deepest forest, their towering heights from which you never shrank robbed you, of the love you once held for dragonflies and fireflies and salamanders and baby frogs, replaced it with a weakening indolence, the kind that leads to cynicism and a disdain for human contact look in the mirror old friend do you even recogise yourself the way I do not? for have we not both changed, us on either side of the mirror? [11-X-2020]