A Love Letter To The Person I Used To Be

I find you in my skin, in the scars that tell your stories. Little anecdotes to pull out at parties so new friends can meet you and love you just the same as I do. They laugh, and they ask questions, and they understand what was left within those permanent scars.

I find you in old playlists scrawled on scrap pieces of paper floating in boxes. Songs that once held meaning left forgotten, written in pink pen. So I recreate the playlists and listen, an audio time machine to a moment when I thought I had it all figured out.

I find you in the clothes I kept from when you were an impressionable teen. Jeans with legs so wide they could hold all your secrets. Old trends that can be found again in TikTok throwback posts, cycles of styles that scream to be worn again, but by people younger, the age you were then, when you let your soul seep out into your clothes.

I find you in the faces of the ghosts that haunt your hometown. Memories from before, but older now, with spouses and kids and houses. You roam with the people they used to be, too, a city of ghosts calling to us to remember, to never forget what it was like when we were all together.

I find you in the memories of friends past. They saw you in ways that I never did, shocking revelations that change my perspective of you like an array of ever-warping funhouse mirrors. They talk about how you were friends with everyone, how you were walking art, and I wonder if I ever really knew you at all.

I find you in old thoughts. The ones that pop up in the gloaming, in the space between waking and dreams, in the moments when old wounds color present insecurities. And you’re waiting there to show me why I’m still a complicated, imperfect, wonderful person.

And I’ll be forever grateful.