Sunshine

Sunshine. That’s how I’ll remember you. You were fifteen. Weren’t you? Perhaps not. Perhaps you were eighteen and perhaps you had left me behind forever. Perhaps you were thirty-six. Perhaps you were married. You were married. You had two sons and a daughter. You wrote books and lived in an enormous white house. You had cats. They used to sleep outside on your front garden. I know, because I was there.
You haven’t seen me for twenty-one years.
I am a liar.
You saw me last week, and again the week before that, and again a few weeks before that. Somehow we keep bumping into each other, like friends. As if we’re friends. Kept, I should say, because…
Well, let’s not dwell on that. Sunshine. That’s how I want to remember you. Fifteen years old with all your innocence intact, dangling your legs in the sunshine. Before you chopped off all your hair and you acquired that fierce cynicism. Before you cut me off for good. Before you were married. Marriage. What an odd word it is. So old. Carrying so much responsibility, so much duty. How you hated duty, once. Now, it is natural. It is becoming. It is what you want. It is what you live for.
Was. Was, was, was. It was natural. It was becoming. It was what you wanted. It was what you lived for.
You don’t live.
I’ll be blunt, you just don’t live. Instead, you are crumpled and broken. There is blood that must once have been running down the side of your face like a teardrop but time has dried it, and it is now a mere stain. Your eyes are open; it was not necessary to close them. You would not wish it. Stay away, your letter said, and so I have left you hanging. Your legs once again dangling, although not in the sunshine.
Not in the sunshine. It is too dark for that.