mostly nonsense

CCXX.

When I spend too much time by myself, I forget who I want to be. I forget which people I care about, which music I enjoy, the sound of my own voice. I make lists (grocery, to-do, things that will remind me of you when you’ve gone) and repeat them like mantras. I tell secrets too easily, spill them to raw-new acquaintances and to children, who swallow them up with the same earnestness as they do animal facts and promises. I watch a man at the 7-11 scan five lottery tickets only to receive the same rejection message each time, and I care too much about how that makes him feel

(well, about how it makes me feel)

I wonder if he has children; I wonder if he’ll get home and have one of them shove him back through the front door so she can let him in herself, if she’ll dance and sing a made-up song about her favorite man in the whole world, and he won’t even think of the flashing red LED lights: “sorry not a winner”.

I wonder, and I wonder, and I daydream fifteen futures, and it’s not until you reach out your hand to brush mine that I remember the future I’m living right now, the one in which I am already the Person I Want To Be, and you’re right here by my side,

and I don’t have to wonder, anymore.