Terug

You are back. So close I imagine I can feel you.

I have deeply conflicted feelings about your return.

When you were gone I knew where you were. If I didn’t know exactly, I knew you paced the same square footage every day.  I know what it is like to ride a ship: to see the silver expanse of ocean stretch to a smudged and shifting horizon. To hear the bells and calls, and feel the thrill of the daily battle rhythm; to know your shipmates and work in a team. I may never have that experience again but I remember. I can imagine you there.

Now you are back, as unconstrained in your movements as any person.

It Isn’t the unconstrained movement that bothers me, I think. It’s the unconstrained spectrum of possibilities and the likely outcome. Integrate from zero to infinity. Normalize the area under the curve to one. Give me your wavefunction. The height and breadth of your personality and choices and  I will calculate the expectation value that I might find you again: the man I knew you once to be. It is a very very low probability, I think.

 I don’t really want to write to you about me anymore. I haven’t been able to write to you for some weeks now. Something so live and vital in me has gone dormant. Some hope has burned too long and is nearly out. I taste tar and ashes in my memories now. The woman you once knew is gone.  I reach back to touch her, confident she has followed me here, want to feel her warm hand and sense her sure footsteps, and find only emptiness on the path behind.