Someone You Once Knew

Tonight I saw someone I once knew. He wasn’t entirely the same, but I knew it was him from the way his eyes stood out starkly against his shadowed skin, the way his shoulders perched an inch or two higher than they should have rested, had life not lifted them higher and higher with each new deadline, each statement uttered as a joke but heard as a “do better” or a “you’re not good enough”, and hunched forward just slightly to protect his heart from the harshness, the unawakedness of the endlessly and needlessly buzzing world around him. Tonight he won a championship. The last time I heard from him he cried. Pleading with me to forgive him not for his own sanity, but for mine. Happiness can’t come with a grudge. But I wanted that grudge. I wanted something to be angry about, because being righteous was easier than being truthful with myself. I hated when I discovered for myself that his moaning, his anger, his stubbornness, were not as silly and unfounded as I once thought. I hated when I felt that knot in my stomach that he felt when the tables had been turned.

The wall I put up when the tables had first been set up was so suddenly, so reactively built in pure survival mode that my brain never had time to register the change. It was like pulling your hand away from a hot pot before the realization, “I’m burning!”, made it to your brain. And it took a year for my brain to realize that my heart had been burnt this entire time. In this period of recoiling from the heat, I had blistered, sent in all my resources to heal myself, and deflated. While I can no longer feel the heat, the memories of it, and the scars remain. He opened my eyes to the dangers and the wonders of the world held within the same vessel, to truly being able to feel the heat waves emanating from the pot, the steam on my face, the faint scent of salt int he water, and the cascading calmness that comes from pure anticipation after the flame has been stoked.

We haven’t spoken in a year, but I see him in the world all around me — on TV tonight, in the dregs of my teacup, in the pages of my books, in the ink of my pen, and in the habañero peppers of my favorite hot sauce.

Never destined to remain together in this lifetime, but to meet, dance together for a cosmic moment, and continue on in our infinite paths. Someone I once knew.