i meet myself in dreams sometimes.
past-me sits across the table, young and scared and full of hopes. future-me stands by the window, weathered and wise and impossibly calm. past-me cradles a coffee cup, two sugars, splash of milk. i remember that taste, sweet and simple. my own cup sits black and bitter. future-me watches us drink, empty-handed, knowing something i haven't learned yet.
time flows strange between us. past-me still believes in simple answers, carries certainty like armor. future-me asks deeper questions, wears doubt like a comfy coat. i float between them, understanding both, being neither. we are three notes in the same chord, stretched across octaves of time.
past-me carries wounds still fresh - rejection letters crumpled in desk drawers, failed dreams folded like paper planes, a heart raw and tender. each scar still pink and new, each failure still bleeding.
i want to reach across time, explain how these cuts become calluses, how pain transforms into strength. but past-me needs these wounds. they're growing, becoming scar tissue. becoming me. i could warn of the storms ahead. i could map the safe harbors. i could whisper which dreams survive, which ones shatter. but some seas must be sailed alone.
future-me bears scars i haven't earned yet. lines around the eyes from tears and laughter i haven't yet shed, wisdom bought with pain i haven't yet paid for, joy found in places i haven't yet thought to look. he watches me with gentle amusement, knowing i'll learn the only way anyone learns anything - the hard way. through time. through pain.
three echoes of one voice, each speaking from its own year. what was fear becomes strength becomes wisdom, starlight in a dark sky.
past-me feared mediocrity more than death, chased greatness like a shadow at noon. future-me found peace in being not great but good, discovered infinity in small moments. now-me balances between these extremes, learning to be extraordinary in small ways, ordinary in great ones.
time plays tricks with empathy. easy to pity past-me's naive hopes, their desperate clutch at certainty. harder to forgive their necessary failures, the stumbles that taught me to dance. easy to envy future-me's calm wisdom, their gentle acceptance. harder to accept the price they paid for it, the dreams they had to surrender.
past-me would be disappointed in my compromises. future-me understands why i made them. i disappoint one self to become the other.
we leave traces in each other's timelines. past-me's certainties echo in my doubts. my questions cast ripples through future-me's wisdom. we shape each other across years, each version carrying fragments of the others, each moment flowing into the next like ink in water.
time makes strangers of us all. memory makes ghosts of everyone. past-me lives vivid in memory, more real than my reflection. future-me exists in possibility. now-me floats between them like morning fog, barely real, barely here, barely now.
they fade like dawn stars, my selves. more real in their absence than i ever felt in their presence. now-me remains in the eternal almost-was, almost-will-be, learning to love the fading.
the ghosts fade. morning light streams through the window, painting the present in gold.
the coffee grows cold. i lift the cup to my lips, i drink it anyway.