Ten Minutes Scratched - Childhood poem...SOLVED?

And just like that, if you hold it in your mind, it was just as he said, the messiah...you bring to you the things you wish for. But oh I know I wished for you then, much more fervently than I've wished for you now, just now. 14 years down the line and I knew it had been that long, and I know that if you were 30 to begin with, you could only be 44 now, but in my mind you'd stayed that youthful man, that mystery...but I've found you, haven't I? In those places where I've searched before, this wasn't the first time but this was the first time you were THERE.

And 44. And here. And I could see you again, then, after all this time, after all.

And who says life isn't magical. Who says your heart can't pound over a stranger, over a dream, over a figment of your imagination, over something that was never real, but something that changed everything at your young age. Who says that those changes don't resonate into the ages of "reason", where you have to congratulate yourself for simply not clawing at the walls...

You're there. I'm certain it's you. It must be you. These things can't happen. You're not supposed to meet a dream, face to face, no matter how much you long for it, no matter for how long. It's like traveling back in time, it just messes with the line of normal continuity, it messes with the lines of love and loves that make sense, that have reason, that have normalcy, that...but no matter. I have grown but I haven't outgrown. Anyone who knows me, knows that I know love without bounds (sometimes to their great challenge)... that dream, that image, it was never real, but it was always real...because it got me through my childhood when you're not even supposed to know about those concepts because it would drive a child mad, and it would have.

But I could write it out.

I could write the madness out.

I could write the love out.

I learned to write it, so I learned to see it, so I learned to know it, so I learned to feel it, so I learned to believe it, so I learned to share it, so I learned to live it, so I learned to believe in it, so I learned to NEVER STOP. And I never did stop, because of you, in a way.

But now to face the dream in its hard copy reality? Not a name, but a face? I've always known your name, still carry it on the tip of my tongue, in the tips of my fingers, always poised to type it in to try just that one last time to find you, and tonight that one search entered as irony, yielded a result, and it was you. In the flesh and blood. 44. You.

And in PHOENIX.

Two hours away. The entire fabric of my metaphysical existence, manifest in one name that belonged to one fantasy of a life without borders and a love without limits and without reason and without needing one; one name that belonged to a real man all that time after all, one who brought me a cd player and two cds - Counting Crows and Alanis Morrissette when I was sick and needed a friend and you stepped out of your cabin and into my dreams everlasting, to become that practical stranger that became an unlikely friend. Did you ever know how you would resonate? Did you ever know how many lives your act would go on to touch, through me? Ask the people I have known how deeply I have loved them, how much they have felt love through me. They are everywhere. They are in France, England, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Ireland, Malta, Finland, Scotland, Australia, Japan, America. They are everyone everybody would expect me to love, and they are the ones that no one would have thought that I would love. But by and large, no matter who they are or who they were, I did love them, and I still do. Because of you, I am someone who learned how to love a stranger early on, and one of the lucky few, who never learned to stop.

Do you remember me, Stranger? Because I still remember you.

Mark...