"The Shadow-past is shaped by everything that never happened. Invisible, it melts the present like rain through karst. A biography of longing. It steers us like magnetism, a spirit torque. This is how one becomes undone by a smell, a word, a place, the photo of a mountain of shoes. By love that closes its mouth before calling a name."
- Fugitive Pieces, Anne Michaels

I dreamed about you again last night. Just like that, and you were real. I'm sure it has something to do with reunions and deaths . . . both of which have wrapped themselves around my life, one invited and the other not. It's funny how you can know someone so well that it gives you a free pass to honesty if you ever happen to run into them 10 years later. Time slips, and you find yourself looking into their eyes and almost nothing, although everything, has changed.

It seems I know myself so much better then I did then. I'm well aware of the personality flaws that lead me to you - all those complicated words that really meant simple things.

Reunions are like trying to pull a person from your past right into the present. You keep looking at them and wanting them to get the you that you are now, but without changing who they were back then. "No, no, not you - I want the you that I knew. Now. Look at me. Can I please tell you where I've been? You would totally get this. What do you mean you don't get it? You would totally have gotten this!" And just like that you realize that all those years they weren't just sitting on a shelf in your mind, too high to reach. They were living too, and then CRACK you realize you're not the same person you once were. And neither are they.

Out of nowhere you lost your brother, and I had to write you. I didn't know what to say, except, I had loved you. I had loved him. And I'm sorry. Aaron was singing in my head "I would be her everything until forever comes and leaves again. . . . we danced for a little while, we danced until the music stopped". It seemed the whole conversation we were skillfully maneuvering around the unfamiliar. And in the end, I just needed you to know I was strong. You waited for a moment and then sighed "Melissa, you've always been strong".
And just like that I felt okay.
Thank you for remembering me.
Thank you for helping me remember me.