Member-only story
The Past Catches Up With Me Right Before I Fall Asleep
Mistakes of the day haunt me while yesterday’s broken promises croon a lament.
Sometimes I imagine my mind is filled with closed doorways, each one embossed with an image of the person I could have become.
If only, if only — there’s always that echo winding its way through these unspoken halls.
That door across the way shows my young self holding the effigies of the people I could have painted into being. Maybe if I had learned the color wheel or if I had gone to a school with a dedicated art program — maybe then that girl could have shined. Maybe she would be making movies now, or drawing storyboards for other people, or watching in an audience while the characters she dreamed alive gallivant around a cinema screen.
Farther down there’s another door, this one splashed in hues of hot pink and smoky purple in a tie-dye fusion spit out of the Season of Love, and that self of mine is embracing a faceless individual — someone tall, head bent to rest against the crook of her neck, a form too androgynous to be called male or female in truest tell-tale degrees. Maybe these two would have had a whirlwind love affair spun out of the most epic romances — or perhaps they are just meeting once, only to part in a few hours and never see…
