What You Are To Me Reprised

Must you ask, what you are to me? Then let me say, and say it well. In the past, you once wore a mask, a face of what I could not tell. Then, like a god, you take to task my proud conceit cloaked in a shell. Today, intense and raven-haired with wisdom fit for Pallas Athene, you are the souls that seldom dared to be the friends who've never been, the confidantes with whom is shared my hope of things 'oft never seen. Now, like the Atlas map and chart, you're a compass to guide my paths through hopelessness that filled my heart. And so, life's trials and downdrafts are less severe because you part my sea of pain so I can laugh.