Whatever, Poet

Memory doesn’t live in your head. It lives in your skin.

6/16/2026

I saw our chairs today.

The ones by the window.

The ones where two strangers spent an afternoon pretending four years was a reasonable amount of time to summarize.

I stood there longer than I should have.

The chairs were empty.

The table was empty.

The coffee shop was full of people who had no idea an entire chapter of my life had once sat there.

Four years.

Four entire years.

And yet when I looked at those chairs, I could still hear your laugh.

I could still hear the pauses between our sentences.

I could still feel the hug goodbye.

The one that lasted only a moment but somehow carried years inside it.

It was strange seeing you again.

Not because you were unfamiliar.

Because you weren’t.

You walked through the door and I recognized you instantly.

The way you carried yourself.

The way you smiled when you saw me.

The way your eyes searched mine to see if I was nervous too.

I knew you immediately.

And at the same time, I didn’t know you at all.

Because time does not stand still simply because we want it to.

I spent years carrying a version of you in my memory.

A snapshot.

Frozen.

Untouched.

The same smile.

The same face.

The same person I had memorized so carefully.

But the man who sat across from me wasn’t frozen.

He had lived.

The years had found him.

There were new lines around his eyes.

New stories behind them.

New worries.

New joys.

New scars I knew nothing about.

And all I could think was how unfair it felt.

Not the aging.

The missing.

The fact that life kept happening to you and I wasn’t there to witness it.

I used to know every version of your face.

I knew the tiny crease that appeared when you were trying not to laugh.

The lines that formed beside your eyes when you genuinely couldn’t stop.

The expression you made when you were frustrated but didn’t want to admit it.

The look you gave me from across a room when you wanted to leave.

I spent years studying you without realizing I was studying.

Love does that.

It turns observation into instinct.

I knew your face the way sailors know constellations.

Not because I tried to memorize it.

Because I needed it.

Then one day I wasn’t allowed to watch anymore.

And somehow four years passed.

Four years of smiles I never saw.

Haircuts I never complimented.

Stories I never heard.

Bad days I never helped carry.

Good days I never celebrated.

An entire life unfolding just beyond my reach.

We sat there drinking coffee and introducing ourselves again.

Telling stories.

Sharing updates.

Laughing.

And for a while I convinced myself that was all it was.

Two old friends catching up.

Two people reconnecting.

Two adults acknowledging the past and moving forward.

Then you hugged me goodbye.

And every lie I had told myself disappeared.

Because memory doesn’t live in the mind.

It lives in the body.

For one brief second I remembered everything.

The first time I held you.

The last time I held you.

Every version in between.

The good.

The bad.

The ugly.

The good again.

The bad again.

All of it arrived at once.

Years collapsed.

Time folded.

And suddenly I understood something I had spent four years avoiding.

I hadn’t forgotten you.

I had simply learned how to carry you.

Today I saw our chairs.

And for a moment I hated them.

Because they reminded me that some people never really leave.

They just stop collecting new memories with you.

The old ones remain exactly where you left them.

Waiting.

Perfectly preserved.

Like sunlight trapped inside amber.

And that’s the cruelest part.

The memories don’t age.

We do.

I looked at those empty chairs and thought about the man sitting across from me a few days ago.

The one with a few more lines around his eyes.

The one with stories I hadn’t heard.

The one who had become a stranger.

Then I thought about the boy I used to know.

The one whose smile I could have drawn from memory.

The one I believed I would never lose.

And for a moment, both of them existed at the same time.

The stranger.

And the person who once felt like home.

I miss them both.

And that’s what nobody tells you about time.

It doesn’t just take people away.

Sometimes it leaves every version of them behind.

To the love of my life. You.

6/04/2026

Dear Future Me,

I hope you found yourself.

Not a better version of yourself.
Not a more successful version.
Not a thinner, richer, happier, more accomplished version.

Just yourself.

As I write this, I feel suspended between chapters.

I don’t know if I’m making the right decisions. In fact, that’s probably my biggest fear. Not failure. Not embarrassment. Regret.

I worry about looking back one day and realizing I ignored my instincts. That I stayed too long. Left too soon. Chose comfort when I needed courage. Chose change when I needed patience.

The truth is, I don’t know what comes next.

Right now, there are parts of my life that feel unfinished.

I’m mourning a relationship that I’m still in. That’s a strange thing to admit. Nothing catastrophic happened. No dramatic ending. Just a growing distance that feels impossible to ignore. Sometimes it feels like I’m grieving someone who is still sitting beside me.

Maybe you know how that story ends.

I don’t.

I also find myself thinking about Mom more than I used to.

Not because anything is wrong.

Because time is.

For most of my life, she felt permanent. Now I notice little things. Another year passing. Another birthday. Another reminder that the people we love don’t stay frozen in time just because we need them to.

If she’s still here when you read this, hug her.

If she isn’t, then I hope you’ve learned that love doesn’t leave when people do.

I wish I could say I’m proud of where I am, but the truth is I don’t feel much pride right now. Maybe that’s unfair. Maybe I’ve spent so much time focusing on what’s missing that I’ve forgotten to acknowledge what I’ve built.

I have a life.

I have people who care about me.

I have new friendships forming in places I never expected.

And maybe that’s worth more than I realize.

The funny thing is that despite all of these worries, a small part of me believes everything is going to work out.

I don’t know why.

I don’t have proof.

But it’s there.

A quiet voice beneath all the noise saying: Keep going.

So that’s what I’m doing.

I’m keeping going.

If you’ve finished every page of this journal, then thank you for not quitting on us.

Tell me something.

Did we stop searching for ourselves because we finally found who we were?

Or did we discover that the search itself was the point all along?

Either way, I hope you’ve become someone you genuinely enjoy being.

And if you’re still figuring it out, that’s okay too.

I am too.

Love,