You are the most
The words linger on the page, spots of ink on paper, an incomplete thought. Maybe he is too scared to finish the whole thing. To string his thoughts together like beads, to put these delicate but all too simple thoughts into words, to have them read (possibly), to have them heard (possibly), by anyone other than himself – has he ever felt so exposed? No, not even when the fire of a thousand suns sprang from a thousand suns and razed miles of desert
What would he say to her that a hundred million others before him have not already said? What could he say to her that a thousand greeting cards mantras could not say? Had he the ingenuity to weave together some
I want to be 16 again and not be so dumb. Not to be so dumb about it. I want to be a middle schooler and walk to school, to the subway, with headphones and Gleb’s CD player in my pocket, my baggy ski coat’s pockets, because I broke my own. I want to wake up to Purple Haze on my clam shell phone at seven in the morning and not get to school on time, ever. I want to go through everything again but I also want to be 24 while I’m getting there because I want the me now to remember what I was like then but also for the me then to know what I know now so that I can see things clearly, as they were, with a different set of eyes instead of just remembering. I still walk by the same places I walked all those years earlier. The same highways, the same streets, with the occasional new building or new playground but I want to be two things at once – two impossible things at once – because I don’t know what to do with myself in this moment. I wish I knew what was going to happen to me. I wish I knew what this was all for and whether or not I actually got anywhere – or where I got, if I got somewhere. Where do I go now? All the things that can go wrong but there are a few things that went right. I’m not even sure how to feel about all of this. Where do I go what is going to happen and why – will it be okay will it be okay? I can’t tell and it scares me that I can’t tell and that I won’t know until it happens and years from now I’ll look back and want to be 24 again and want to be 24 wanting to be 16 again – and you didn’t listen to your parents to enjoy your time when you were 16 because you’re only 16 but you knew that and you believed them but what were we supposed to do with that kind of information when you are in that moment except to not understand and forget it and walk on and keep being 16 in the moment and be 16 just once – what happens to us – can you still remember the stairs, going across the bridge, the pale linoleum floors, the fading lights and raucous of students in the stairs, the escalators that never worked, morning light that you never see now because you’re not up that early coming in across the squares they called windows – all the things that mattered then and all the things that matter now and everything in between – what was any of that for – where did all the time go.