If you were here

I wonder, all the time, where I would be if you were still here.
Would I have run so far?
Would I have grown this much?
Would I have felt the same pain, and joy, and tasted life's bittersweet chocolate?

Would you have protected me, or held me back?
It was always so complicated, the lines of adulthood blurred for so many decades, the struggle for dominance, never clear.

You let me fly, only when you knew you may not be there, should I stay.
You wanted to prepared me for this life without you keeping me in line, reminding me... humility....

...and here I am, on your 61st birthday just wondering how different it all would have been.
Would it have been us against the world, instead of us against each other? We were so close to being there before the empire fell.
Maybe the universe wasn't ready for that amount of strength and power that we collectively held.

Still today I wonder, wonder where the road would have lead us, and would I feel so sad...
...yet so free.