enouement

"n. The bittersweetness of having arrived here in the future, where you can finally get the answers to how things turn out in the real world—who your baby sister would become, what your friends would end up doing, where your choices would lead you, exactly when you’d lose the people you took for granted—which is priceless intel that you instinctively want to share with anybody who hadn’t already made the journey, as if there was some part of you who had volunteered to stay behind, who was still stationed at a forgotten outpost somewhere in the past, still eagerly awaiting news from the front."


Do you know what hurts even more than the leaving?
It's the hand-me-down knowledge of the ways you're changing,
the photographed smiles I can no longer decipher.
I hate this one-way mirror I watch you through,
made of pictures and rumours and second-hand stories.
There was a time when I could swear
our souls had sprouted from the same soil,
and our brains swam among the same stars.
There was a time when I didn't have to try to know you,
because to know you was to know myself.
I don't think I know either of us anymore.
But still, I'll toss aside my pride
and beg your friends for a tale or two
about how you've been, and what you're doing,
and if you're happy.
There was a time when we swore we'd grow old together,
but I don't think we realised then
that we weren't even finished growing up.
I hate that I don't get to know the person you're becoming.
I hate that I'm not the same person that you loved.

I'll watch your life in pictures.