It's been nine years since she died. Or that's what we thought. History, memory, time came to a full stop where she could not adapt. She was given up, folded, archived, black and white pictures in the bottom drawer of an empty desk.
I was the empty desk. Life anew. "You are exactly like her," heard a strange personality masquerading among her acquaintances, a covering projection of an imposter. Her friends, though, mourned and accepted the substitute. Sometimes they pulled up the archive to point to a page or two. Sometimes they missed her presence too.
But she was only dormant. Her unresolved characters flare up into the cold space on occasion. Torn, fragmented images adrift in thoughts and actions never quite find their way to each other.
Nine years was but a cycle to an eerie familiarity. A maybe inadvertently crossed the mind leaving a crack in the shell. No longer solidified, she rampaged through the surface, engulfing what she scorched. That was me allowed her resurrection.
Nine years fill a desk. Is she taking over now? Would she survive it this time? I misjudged her intention. I have missed the weight of time bearing down on the strained legs and the sore heart. A slow, imperceptible accumulation of moments verges on a collapse. She would take me with her at the implosion to a minuscule desk with a minuscule drawer. We would be once again closer.
How many times we must play the dying and the resurrected in this recursive game of life, we wondered. The final level may be reached asymptotically but with escalating difficulty. Buried tracks and conjured up figures are the clues. Living in a backed-up dream, we rest for the next round.
12/27/2020
in Palo Alto