Re: Five Years Later

by practicalspactical

I also wrote this, a little more than five years ago, as part of the First Post:

This afternoon, the girl from way back when, the one with the false start, called me on the phone. She said she had come to Philadelphia on a whim, and she wanted to see me.

We went to get coffee, and then we walked through the park. I smoked a cigarette, and a homeless man came to bum one and then proceeded to talk to us for the rest of our time there. He told us he was the only leprechan in America. He asked us our birthdays and read us our signs. He was the same sign as me, a Cancer.

I told him I had always thought Cancer was the worst sign. He disagreed, but told us how if you accept something from a Cancer, and it goes poorly, or something like that, the Cancer will then hurt you, mentally or emotionally. It’s funny – it’s true. It’s what I had done to this girl, all those years ago, when it had ended badly.

I regretted that so much. She wouldn’t talk to me, and I began to realize that I would never see her again, that she was out of my life forever. The whole think stank of a kind of death.

I went on with life, knowing what loss was, knowing what regret was.

And now my girl is in South America, at the ends of the Earth, and I may never see that one again, and I know loss, and I know regret.

Since then, I’ve been waiting. Waiting for the narrative to continue. Waiting for “Six Months Later” to flash across the title card.

I guess life has a way of surprising everyone, even me.

And that’s how a chapter ends. That’s how a book gets written. That’s how a life gets lived.

So strange.

There it is. A FLASH ACROSS THE SCREEN THAT READS:

FIVE YEARS LATER.

WAKE UP, JOSH. WAKE UP.

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