You. Who is not me. I know now what you, who was not you, was thinking. What you were feeling. How funny that me, who is not she, has taken so very long to come to grips with that feeling. How lacking in empathy again, that I didn’t understand you, who was you, most wonderful you, and was wanting also to be that you, or him or her or we. The incredible, the lusted, the aching you or him or her or we.
The penny. The other shoe. The little yellow disc in the connect four. The moment of. The explanation. The light bulb. The A-ha. The band that is.
I know what you want. And it’s pricking at you like a pine needle in your shoe.
You want to know what she’s thinking.
What she’s feeling. What she meant. Who that person was. And if what she felt for that person then is the same or different or better or more or less or close to or closet or closed up in comparison to what she feels for you now. You want the most out of anyone that has ever been given, despite knowing that this is not the pinnacle of human experience, this is life, as real and as boring and repetitive and rehashed as it’s ever been and ever going to be. But all the same, that what you want. And you want to be written that way. Indeed, perhaps all it is, is that you hope that she feels things for you now – even unpinnacle things – because otherwise the things you feel for her now are going to drive you mad. And if she can recollect and shape and feel these things for him or her or them or we and they are not you and you are not them, or it displaces you who is you, then you are fucked.
Scattergun lust is going to shoot you down, down until you’re lying in the dust with your broken down cowboy boots and you won’t ever really know if you were ever really you.
eleanor j jackson 