i went over to his place to pick up a box, brought it home. a box filled with old memories. notebooks. ticket stubs. photographs and letters. i didn't mean to go through it - not really. but there sat my life, in the form of crinkled paper and scribbled words.
words of old. words that make me cringe at the absurdity, or wastefulness. or both. things i'd forgotten, people i'd known, even here. birthday and post cards from far away lands, from people who knew me once, now forgotten. so many letters, and yet... i know i never wrote back, not once.
i found a letter to myself there, dated '97. and i remembered that even then i could see it, just a little, that some day... some day i'd find my way. some day i'd, you know, make it. push through the piles of crap that imprisoned me.
it reminded me of the days i wandered aimlessly through life, drifting and drifting, stuck in a limbo at times. and it reminded me of the hope i had, even then.
i am not who i once was. not quite. i still have scars and smudged blotches and there are days the heat of the sun on my cheek goes unnoticed. there are days i might remember more, just a little, what is was like to be forever filled with an insatiable longing. for something. for anything.
but no. i am not who i once was.
so i put all my memories back into that old cardboard box, and tuck it away in the corner of my closet. to be remembered again, someday.