i met an old, dying man on the desert road. i recognised his face, he was me from a long time ago.
“how could it be?” i exclaimed.
“i am you from back then,” he said, startling me, “when we had nothing but hope. do you remember me? i have been waiting to talk to you.”
“what do you have to tell me?” i asked, impatient as it began to rain.
“did things get better? i have to know.”
“they're getting better now,” i said but he cut me off.
“i waited for so long. if things got better, why did it take so long? i have been sitting in this desert for a decade, waiting for the rains to come. all the hope i had in me has shrivelled up like this dying body. i gave everything i had, i sacrificed the little love i still felt, and i gave it all just to hold on for one more day, one more year. so tell me again, why did it take so long and so much of me?”
“perhaps,” i suggested that there had been no better option or that it had been worth it. but such words were not worth even the air it took to breathe them nor to retell them.
gripping my wrist with his bony hand, he demanded a defense over and over and over again but i could give him none.
“i, i remember so little of it now. those times back then.” he said. “i wish i could've borrowed a little bit of joy from you now, a little bit of water, for back then, to nourish me. i wish i'd kept some of it for myself, but i never could, could i?”
rainwater pooled at my feet, around his body, the sand turning red wet under the sudden storm. he coughed weakly, mustering all his remaining strength. i kneeled down, to bear witness.
“i have to accept this,” he decided as water rose around him, the sands turning to tides, “and i will. this desert shaped me but i do not need to count my rations anymore by their water drops.”
and i watched him sink into the flood and disappear from my sights. beyond my sight, i hoped he would find his way to precious soil beneath the sands, and take root for a new life.
In the past tense, we were good, we were beautiful; in the present, good becomes something else.
Both of these things can be true; to hold two truths in one hand, it is juxtaposition that eludes us. (perhaps it might heal us.)
How can a human hold such contradictions within them and not combust when they yearn to be absolute?
Easier to catch a burning comet, where the pain would be redeemed by the touch of something impossible by any other measure.
To know that we had it in our hand, even for a moment.
Or perhaps starry skies and nebulous truths are one and the same: both marvellous phenomena to guide us when we are lost.
(Even when they make us feel so uncomfortably small.)
The first thing she does is dust the memories off from the shelves. The shelves stand silent, uncreaking by their years, frozen under the bending weight of a lifetime in this cosy nook in the middle of nowhere.
Back then, she'd have called it a museum... if it'd ever gotten any visitors. In her absence, she'd left it open to anybody in the know but still, in the years she's been gone, she is the first to step foot within.
The dust brings her to tears, or perhaps it is the memories? Whichever it is, it triggers her allergies.
She'd come prepared: to tie her hair back, roll her sleeves up, and scrub the surfaces clean of their accumulated filth and grime. But everything was cleaner than she'd expected, just aged under a thin layer of dust.
Books with spines stiff, pages of letters yellowing with time, dim photos beholding brighter memories. Thick folders of old notes and recipes and napkins scribbled with ideas and other cut-out articles, earmarked always for a rainy day with free time that never came. Little crafts all throughout her shelves and cabinets: a bracelet from a beloved sibling, a quilled card from friends fallen out of touch, old tickets to places she couldn't remember with people she couldn't forget.
She'd held onto everything that had mattered.
And that presents a problem, because none of it matters now. She has a one-way ticket to her future, and she doesn't have any room to bring the past with her.
(Not that it's a bad thing, the past. It's just taking up too much real estate and she needs to be practical.)
She needs to clean it all out and leave nothing behind.
It shouldn't be this hard.
There wasn't anything that couldn't be cherished in a different form, like digital photos, their essence captured without the solid weight.
But time changes a person and sometimes, that person is pissed at themselves for twenty years lost and changed and irreversibly grown. Sometimes, they wanna burn it all to the ground by the time they get to the end.
The 'museum' used to be her prison as much as it was her sanctuary: where she'd found comfort in familiarity, she'd also found anxiety of the unknown, the greater beyond the four walls she'd called cosy.
She looks at her treasures – sits cross-legged in the middle of the floor and sorts them one by one – and sees how cheaply they were made, precious more in misery than in joy.
She doesn't know what to do with the juxtaposition: the need to make room for the new, the urge to protect the space that once was.
Footsteps come in after her.
(The museum's second visitor; the first, if you don't count her.)
Being an ever -prepared museum curator, she used to plan out her tours: how she'd lead a newcomer through her life, explaining every detail. She doesn't know if she still has what it takes, if the words can still leave her lips, if they even have enough time to spare for her to say it all.
He's all loose-limbed and lanky in the doorway, hands in pockets, unhurried. He takes turns looking at her, and looking around.
“Are you okay?”
She nods, quick to the familiar answer, but a beat later, she gives him a shaky smile. “This was me... before, before I was free.”
These were the things that matter so little now, but mattered then. They shaped her, often in ugly ways, but who would she be without them?
“I don't like most of it anymore,” she adds.
“Why?” he asks, simply.
“It pales in comparison to now... how can twenty years mean so little?”
He pauses. “Hey... just look at what you built, all by yourself. It was your whole world, yes, but it gave you everything you needed to survive.
“You're not leaving it behind, you're just making your world bigger than before.” He takes her hand. “Think about what you can build, once we knock those walls down and there's nothing to hold you back anymore.”
“I don't know what to build,” she admits, softly, “I had all these plans... but I don't want to follow them anymore.”
“Then let's make something new altogether, something nobody'll see coming!”
She can't help a giggle at his wink. “I'm not used to being unpredictable.” Not used to being somebody new, different from who she once was.
“Well, whoever you turn out to be, I'm already a fan.” He says, with more confidence than he ought. “And whoever you were before, I want to know.
“You can always give your past to me to cherish when you cannot.”
So she does.