Some other life

Maybe we knew each other in a different life, what do I know? I look around for you and I find you a little in every man I meet, but you're not the same and then I wonder if I am. I remember you from somewhere before the beginnning of time, when our souls were young and you hadn't strayed from me. Or maybe I hadn't strayed from you.
But every time I think I see you, you're not you, it's like something's happened, tearing you from the you I knew and making you into someone utterly different. And then I wonder if it's not really just me who changed, maybe you're the same, exactly, precisely yourself, but I'm not. My eyes have become altered, I tell myself, I now see through a different lens.
Sometimes, I think we never knew each other. That I simply imagined you, in the privacy of my own head and you in yours, imagined me instead. Maybe we're just branches reaching out to each other but always awkwardly out of reach.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to sadden you. I know you have your problems, that someties you're upset more than I am, that sometimes maybe you need someone to listen to you and nobody does and I know how you feel because nobody listens to me either. And yet we can't speak,not to each other, because we don't know each other. Not anymore. We've forgotten. I remember you, but you no longer remember me. And when you do, I always fail to remember you.
Peering at each other through the cracks of time, but our voices never echoing far enough.

I have a confession to make. I make you up sometimes. And other times, I worry you're made up altogether, but that's not really the point. I look at people and I see you in their eyes and I feel like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. Or the tree stump? Where did Alice fall and why?
I was always terrible at remembering things, but I know you weren't. If you were here now, you'd tell me which it was and you'd laugh because it's really rather silly to forget, isn't it? But you're not here, so you can't laugh at me, although I wish you would.
I invent you in another's eyes, I sneak you in there, while they're looking at me, trying to figure me out and failing. I wish they didn't fail me, I really sometimes wish one would come along and get it all, perfectly, as if sometimes before, he knew me too. Then I could forget about you, about ever knowing you and I'd be all figured out. But nobody does and I don't let them. I know, you don't have to shout.

You don't let others figure you out either.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean that, or rather I didn't mean for it to hurt you like that.

I think one day, when I'm tired of looking, I'll just write down 'where did Alice go?' or something like that, you know, on a piece of paper and let you find it. Except of course, I don't know where you are, so I don't know how you could find it. But you will, it will float in the wind and people will sometimes catch it. The note will stop on their shoe briefly or dance in their face and they'll read it and shrug and let it go and it will travel like I can not and it will find you and lead you back to me.

And even if it doesn't, I'll be happy because at least a part of me managed to find a part of you.

Here comes another, a mismatched glance and I'd like it to be for me. I play with them like they were nothing, I smile slightly because maybe it's you. I know it's not, but maybe. And he smiles back because he's looking for someone too, I realize and it hits me like a punch in the heart. That he too is broken up inside and utterly alone, where he was once together. He too remembers the world before time when he knew her – his her, you see – and he didn't feel this way. And he too is struggling in his mind for ways to find her again.

I look away because I can't really keep playing now, I feel I've done something awful, like I've looked inside a room that was private, not for me to look at. And I'm afraid for the man who just passed because he's opened the door too many times now, I just know it, like he told me, except he didn't. He just smiled when he passed me by, as if he was saying goodbye. Too many people had looked inside his heart and he couldn't quite close the door anymore.
And the more I revisit his heart in my mind, I see you. Not you, not as you were, but as you are now. I realize I saw you and that you passed me by. I don't think you've forgotten, I just think you're too broken to look. And as I run out after him – after you – I know I'll never catch him. The world I saw in his eyes was just a glimpse into a broken mirror. You're too tired to look, I was too hard to find.

Perhaps we'll meet again in some other life.

Thank you for reading,