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thirty-first, aug alone and feeling empty, i decided to look through my picture collection... she must have snuck the diary into a box sitting in my closet shortly after we broke up. we were as close as siamese twins not so long ago, and so i let her have it after i was tired of writing in it so that she could read everything. maybe it was metaphorical of my desire for us to become two mirrors perfectly reflecting each other's reflections into infinity. i suppose i never figured that one could know an other too well. i hadn't written in those pages since i was 17 and we were just learning how to take our hands off the rails and spiral out in love. i hadn't read it since the ink dried. intrigued by who i was then, when nothing seemed to go right, when psychic explosion was completely the norm, i began to flip through the pages. i read, in a sweat, deep into the hot night. and to my surprise, the boy who wrote those deadly phrases, who left smudged fingerprints in the margin, that boy seemed remarkably familiar. i didn't feel so alone anymore. january 23, 2004: "i guess i hope you don't get bored with me. i'll make us last as long as i can. i promise." what i wouldn't do to meet myself that night, lost forever in that dead and gone january chill, and let me know that, even though i forgot ever making it, i kept my promise until the end. i don't feel so alone or empty anymore: my 17 year old self is within me like a tree ring, like those russian dolls people set out at christmas time. reading his thoughts like an outsider, i'd say i'm pretty damned glad that i know him. |