lyrical dreams
I wake up on the floor of my old room in my parents' house. My cousin opens the door to see if I'm awake. Tall, lanky, long hair - he must've been 14 or 15, which means so was I. I pretend to sleep until he closes the door. I wonder what I'm doing here.
As though on cue, music from the stereo three rooms down starts hammering through every wall, and it's so loud that I know this will be the moment that gets me out of bed today. It takes barely a second to pick myself off the floor and clear my eyes. Bold strides to the living room, past my dad in the kitchen. Without a word I grab the remote and take the volume down a notch or 10. Sparing me questions or comments, he settles for an embarrassed expression as I just as wordlessly head back to the bedroom.
As I close the door my annoyance turns to perplexity as I wonder what I'm doing here. I check my phone, the call history, and I know something's not right. First of all, I've got a Blackberry at age 15 (making the year approximately 1998). Second, I can't find your name on my call logs. I crawl through the address book, the messages. Nothing. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.
But I remember your number. I remember it the way a favorite song leaves an echo in your head, or how fingers remember how to play the tune long after the melody leaves memory. "Oh four three four..". As I scribble an SMS, the phone rings. It's you.
None of this makes sense, but I don't ask for it to. I'm relieved; it feels like an eternity since we've spoken. We make chitchat, mostly small talk. How we've been, what we've been up to. You mention a surprise birthday lunch uni friends sprung on you at a scheduled "group meeting", and I'm guilty of being more jealous than happy for you. But the feeling evaporates as I soak up your words, your sighs.. your cynicism, worry, annoyance, your laughter, your giddy delight. In thirty seconds flat I'm just glad again to be talking with you.
It's a pain to hang up, but we finally do. A familiar echo - "there's never enough time". In my mind I search for the last time we saw each other. Blank. Preston.. you said you'd moved to Preston from your old place. When did that happen? How did I miss that?
The oddness of my present circumstances return to me. Why am I in high school again, in my parents' house? Why couldn't I find your name on my phone? And why couldn't I recall when you moved house, or anything about when we last met?
A possibility finally hits me, and my stomach churns a little. Did I fall into a coma and wake up in the past, like some sort of Benjamin Button/Rip van Winkle cross? How much time had passed since we last saw each other? What else had I missed? Who had filled up the space in your life between then and now?
How could I not have been there for you? How could this be possible? Who would conceive of such a possibility, much less allow it?
A lump forms in my throat as I digest it all, and as I let a breath out to try and relax I realize I can hear my heart pounding.
Why can't I remember the last time we saw each other?
===
Then I wake up, my blankets and sheets drenched in perspiration and eye-water. It takes me a minute to remember where I am: catching up on sleep, in the house we moved into just seven weeks ago. I walked you to the station just this morning.
My phone is in the living room, and I cannot run for it fast enough.
As though on cue, music from the stereo three rooms down starts hammering through every wall, and it's so loud that I know this will be the moment that gets me out of bed today. It takes barely a second to pick myself off the floor and clear my eyes. Bold strides to the living room, past my dad in the kitchen. Without a word I grab the remote and take the volume down a notch or 10. Sparing me questions or comments, he settles for an embarrassed expression as I just as wordlessly head back to the bedroom.
As I close the door my annoyance turns to perplexity as I wonder what I'm doing here. I check my phone, the call history, and I know something's not right. First of all, I've got a Blackberry at age 15 (making the year approximately 1998). Second, I can't find your name on my call logs. I crawl through the address book, the messages. Nothing. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.
But I remember your number. I remember it the way a favorite song leaves an echo in your head, or how fingers remember how to play the tune long after the melody leaves memory. "Oh four three four..". As I scribble an SMS, the phone rings. It's you.
None of this makes sense, but I don't ask for it to. I'm relieved; it feels like an eternity since we've spoken. We make chitchat, mostly small talk. How we've been, what we've been up to. You mention a surprise birthday lunch uni friends sprung on you at a scheduled "group meeting", and I'm guilty of being more jealous than happy for you. But the feeling evaporates as I soak up your words, your sighs.. your cynicism, worry, annoyance, your laughter, your giddy delight. In thirty seconds flat I'm just glad again to be talking with you.
It's a pain to hang up, but we finally do. A familiar echo - "there's never enough time". In my mind I search for the last time we saw each other. Blank. Preston.. you said you'd moved to Preston from your old place. When did that happen? How did I miss that?
The oddness of my present circumstances return to me. Why am I in high school again, in my parents' house? Why couldn't I find your name on my phone? And why couldn't I recall when you moved house, or anything about when we last met?
A possibility finally hits me, and my stomach churns a little. Did I fall into a coma and wake up in the past, like some sort of Benjamin Button/Rip van Winkle cross? How much time had passed since we last saw each other? What else had I missed? Who had filled up the space in your life between then and now?
How could I not have been there for you? How could this be possible? Who would conceive of such a possibility, much less allow it?
A lump forms in my throat as I digest it all, and as I let a breath out to try and relax I realize I can hear my heart pounding.
Why can't I remember the last time we saw each other?
===
Then I wake up, my blankets and sheets drenched in perspiration and eye-water. It takes me a minute to remember where I am: catching up on sleep, in the house we moved into just seven weeks ago. I walked you to the station just this morning.
My phone is in the living room, and I cannot run for it fast enough.