You are against the odds, you are unexpected, you are a memory of both butterflies in my throat and a punch in the stomach, you are a magnifying glass and a mirror, you are unconditional, you are uncertain.

You are restless, you are ambitious, you are smug. You are exactly and nothing like what I remember. You are the creation of almost three years shrouded in the smoke from the bridges I burned. You distrust, you are suspicious. I am an invasion of sorts; I know all that.

You tell me it is still surreal to hear my voice on the phone, and I have to strain to hear yours and remember how it took a few months to adapt to your low talking. You type ‘talk to you soon’, and say I’m such a dork. When you back away, I raise my defenses. Later,  we rehash, we confess. When your walls are down I want nothing more than to take back every horrible thing I ever did to you. It makes me wish I could give you a clean slate and forgive the laundry list, once and for all.

You were thought of only in passing, and almost always with the disbelief that I had spent 4.5 years of my life with someone I no longer knew anything about. You express about the same about me, but I’m sure you still know how I take my coffee. I think I might know nothing about you, but maybe I do. I can still hear your exact tone of voice when you chide “Shut up.” in a mid day light hearted conversation. I’d forgotten all about the angry ducks and Dracula 2000, I smile at the reminder. But then, you don’t know me, not really. I took my coffee black for awhile, and you don’t know why. I burst out laughing one 1 AM night, and after I hang up the phone, I realize it’s been years since you heard me laugh like that.

I wonder lots of things and with so little information I dissect. I’m sure there are questions I want to ask you, but I don’t even know what they are. You don’t really ask me questions. I want you to know everything. I don’t want to reveal too much too soon – it’s hard not to be at least a little defensive. It’s as if I’m on a perpetual first date, except with it’s with one of my oldest friends.

You are a measure of the passing of time, you are heavy; sometimes even a pleasant burden, and I start to understand there are other kinds of baggage. You are my unconscious stand in, and I am yours.  You are an ex-boyfriend. You are an old friend. You are a first love. You are a standard, good and bad. Through you I learned what it meant to have a broken heart, and later, what it was to have broken a heart. You know how it is.

I wonder what I look like to you I try to see myself as through sneaking up on myself in a mirror. Instead, I see my own startled eyes, nearly three years older, and wondering what the hell we’re doing. But anyway, it’s all okay

You are open. You are guarded. You are as passive aggressive as always. You may be trying to rattle me, I can never tell, especially not now. A few times I catch the acidic tone to your sentence and wonder if this can ever really be natural. You still think I should be punished. I get that.

You tease me a little, you drunk dial me, you make me remember things I thought I’d forgotten. Through you, I can see how much more comfortable I’ve become in my own skin. I should be wringing my hands, but all I really want is a good chai and umpteen hours to get to know the people we’ve become. You are four years of my life, and a lifetime ago.

You make me think, you make me regress, you make me write nonsense, you make me want to live a better life.  You make me remember that I once wanted lots and lots of things, and that I mostly got them.

“So what happens now?” you ask, late Sunday night that’s become a bizarre routine.

I still don’t know, but I never did.