Possible Pasts

"They flutter behind you
your possible pasts
some bright-eyed and crazy
some frightened and lost
a warning to anyone
still in command
of their possible future
to take care..."
-Pink Floyd, Your Possible Pasts

A different city...another time.

Strange little shop in a funky little northside neighborhood.

It was the camera shop that she had managed. As I looked around I knew immediately that this place was the sort of place she loved.

The employees worked away efficiently, customers came and went.

Nobody noticed me. I have that talent.

Then I saw it.

A handmade sign in her handwriting.

It was unmistakably hers, with the loopy curlicues and flourishes.

I reached out my hand to it.

Hot tears burned my eyes, I couldnt take it anymore. I bolted outside and sat on a bus stop bench. I sobbed like a child. The dichotomy of the scene overwhelmed me. It was a beautiful, warm summer day filled with sunshine. And yet, to me it might as well been the coldest bleakest winter. I was in the wrong season...

"I do not want to go back. I do not want to relive the horror.
I do not want to reclaim the pain. There is pain too deep to withstand right here, right now. There is no way to recapture that awfulness, anyway. The mind and heart, safely over to the farther shore, simply refuse to encompass the enormity of the voyage.

Fragments...
...all around, fragments of my work, my life, my love and my pain,
scattered in this bleak season...

And in the darkness, shards of time."
-Glen Cook, Bleak Seasons

I had a vison sitting there, a Possible Past that never was:

I had shown up unannounced to surprise her, as I have done often in the past. She feigned surprise, secretly delighted to see me. We had coffee at the Cafe down the street, reminiscing about old times and new. I gave her a cd I'd made just for her. I hoped she would get the inside jokes and references I carefully placed in it. Of course she would. I told her about the book I'm writing, how I've been working on it for so long. We would promise to keep in touch.

"Dont you remember me? how we used to be? do you think...we should be closer?"

But this is all just fantasy now. It never happened, and now never will.

"...strung out behind us the banners and flags of our possible pasts lie in tatters...and rags."