Eileen gave me some Polaroids from her engagement party over dinner tonight. I don't mind how I look in them. Polaroids have that magic—they can make anyone look pretty.
My memories of last year are faded Polaroids—pretty, but distant. Divorced. Deceitful, almost, in light of present truths. Like they are of relics of another lifetime, of another world.
But when I'm in Stata at night, and it's empty, I'm empty.
Because sometimes they linger. Snapshots stretched through time, never severed, into space-filling curves.
We used to fill the halls at midnight with our boisterous laughter. With the most outlandish of shenanigans. With reality TV and Nerf gun wars. With incessant chit-chat fuelled by child-like curiosity for one another—Does it hurt talking to your mom? What sparks joy? When was the last time you cried?—now lost.
Leave me desolate, why don't you? I'd wanted to make memories with you.
I paused on a Polaroid of you when Eileen wasn't watching. If I met you now, we wouldn't be friends, let alone best friends. So why can't I let you go? All roads lead back to you, even when there's nothing left of us.
It's not the same.
Our sides meet in a feather's touch, hesitant and oh-so weary, like it'd hurt. It always does. Jarring, isn't it? How the contour of your soul, once a flush fit against mine, now grates—ragged edges on open wounds.
It had never been like this. Never so close. Never so far.
You said that last year was "hype". Because of me.
This year I am sad. Because of you.
I wish I could burn all the Polaroids of us.