yesnothankyou

The universe speaks sometimes, I forget and remember again. teeth peeking, a half-nervous gesture, a semicircle sun mostly obscured by clouds like a secret, and I start thinking I can see a new way of knowing things. Hopefulness muddles reality and I'm accommodating. I don't know if that's a weakness or an epiphany. I've still got time to learn.

There were cuts on the back of your hands from where they dragged along the stone ledge but you didn’t even feel it, I don't think. I slid off the half-wall and my shoes hit the dirt like a slap. a punctuation. Shifting the sequence. Said something like you have too many freckles. Not too many, but the lie felt great. Your mother used to count them, that's what you told me and I believed it because I liked believing you. I was so caught up at the time, prying my way between being somebody and nobody. You would tell me how everything was inevitable, how it was more fun than you’d think to just lean into the punch. You told the biggest lies and I knew. Flexed jaw, cracked jewel, wove me worlds anew. Always calling me from rooftops where I could hear people shouting just so you could tell me some made up story that you swore made you think of me. I don't think I ever told you much of anything, really. I was a collector. Never as cautious as I should have been about what I collected. Marcus warned me not to go looking for facts from someone who liked to bend them, which was good advice that I didn't listen to at all. The performance compelled me and I blossomed around it. Tell me about getting caught in the rain and I'd feel it lashing. Say a name I'd never heard before and it rattled, gilt edged and elegant, letters tilting in calligraphy. It was great until it wasn't. After you moved back, you said the worst thing about me was how I could detach and make the act seem ordinary and simple. The way someone might wash dishes. The way someone might bottle peaches. broken clocks, etc.

It was just so long ago, you know? Why even bother? Because it eludes me how anyone can give up looking at something that demanded their attention once. Run the loop again, find the verse and coda. You, calling me a bitch. Me, asking how can you tell? I wasn't joking, but it made you smile. Just like that, you weren't mad anymore. It was one of those times where I could really see you. I thought you might show me another secret and I wanted to let you. More inlayed gold, grandiloquent.

We talked awhile back. Can you believe one day we just grew up? I can and I can't. I remember the person I was and wonder where she is now. with all my other ghost stories, I guess. You had said you were thinking about me the day before, which was a lie, and I laughed like you knew I would. Fun and familiar. You called me that old name, the only name you ever called me, asking why we even liked that. In my defense, I've never felt like I had a choice in what appeals to me. There were questions I wanted to ask you but it felt better to let them go finally, let the light eat them up. I'll say it here though: I used to wonder what it meant when some of the meanest people I had ever known were mostly exceptionally kind to me.

I'm still trying to make sense of what happens with the things that are no longer assigned to who you are anymore. You used to think I did this kind of thing like admissions with motive, always forging absolution, and maybe sometimes you were right. if that's true then I have never known how to atone correctly. Not for me and not for anyone else. I think you were closer when you talked about leaning into the punch. I think this is just a show of hands. My revolving history of every story that happened to me. How we gave and we kept and we released when it was over, and isn't the releasing remarkable too? I absolve no one of anything. I'm bottling peaches. These are love letters for all the strangers who used to be me.