Dust

When last you saw me, I was 22.

I was still beautiful, then. Despite a year of grief, a fugue state, staying alive because I didn't have enough energy to die, I was still beautiful, when last you saw me.

Illness has aged me. The features are the same, still recognisable; did I stay fixed in your mind, that beautiful younger me? Would you know me, now? Did you bother to remember me?

I saw a photo of you, taken just before you died: my beautiful man, white-haired, underweight, exhausted.

I recognised you. I would recognise you, now, then, forever.

Then and Now

Back then, you made me cry in restaurants. I don't even remember what we were talking about. Maybe it was me realizing that for as much as I honestly believed I loved you--as well as a naive 19-year-old from the country could--this wasn't going to last past graduation.

Would you run from me now or just sneer? Regardless, I'd tell you to your face that your politics are shameful, your attitudes toward women are appalling, and you should really get that urge to dominate looked at.

I would look you in the eye, now, and my sardonic smile has made grown men flinch. You'd reduce me to frustrated obscenity before you ever saw tears again. Hell, I barely recognize the me I was then.

Still, the time had its uses. You were damned fun in bed. Would the people you know now recognize the man I could describe from back then? It makes me wish you'd run for high public office so I could be a shocking secret from your past.

Heh. Connie, I remember you writing about this bloke before.

Yeah. For a first "love", he served his purpose. And very educational.

Hey Raq? Backflung... very nice.

former you

teenage love queen
you and i are going to be
all things all things to each other
all things all things for ever and ever

idealistic uninhibited former you
do you still know me
idealistic uninhibited former me
do i still know you

sweet boy of my dreams
my breath in morn and eve
thirteen years is a such a long while
thirteen years is no time at all

touch me in the black of night
i find you asleep at my side
reach for me again
i find you again

oh, i still know you
oh, you still know me

Liese! Song!

I'm wrestling with one of those for this topic myself - I've been earwormed with the New Riders of the Purple Sage, goold old NRPS, John Dawson and the boys: "I don't know you, you've been lately on my mind..."

This topic, massively ouchy. But good.

I’ve been online now for almost ten years. Back then, I posted with some of the same people I post with now, but I clung to the fringes of those communities, testing the waters too many times before offering opinions. I was a very good girl, especially for a woman in her mid-twenties. If you blinked you missed me, or at least if you blinked twice. People who were in some of those places the same time may remember someone with the same name as the brash Bitch they now know, but more often than not, it’s like this: ”Oh, you were on Table Talk too? I’m sorry...don’t remember that.” Of course not. Courteous, well-spoken, mainstream vapor trails have that effect on people. “I’ve been through some changes, since.”

All for the good. Re an offline conversation we had , don't take it as a suggestion to change that. (I know you wouldn't anyway, but I don't want you think I would be so hurtful as to suggest it.) Your bluntness is both charming and a survival mechanism. We discussed an exception - but it was a once in a blue moon exception; it would be a shame if you took anything I said to apply more generally than that one instance. And the sad fact is you are still better at tact than I am.

Everything has limits, babe. Not to worry. I just found one, that's all. And, luckily didn't hurt anybody. But it's because I know that my tongue is a weapon that I'm careful with it. It's all fun till somebody loses an eye.