Return When Found

The first time Errow left was most definitely on a Friday, that much I know. I do remember looking down at the startled woods in the distance, a figure flickering through them. There was no figure, of course, it was just there in the same sense that he was— an obscene, fragile, absence on a cluttered background.

Who was he to me by this point? Well, he was probably something I should have been more afraid of. But then he was an enigmatic force of familiarity with this undidactic, uncanny fire that made my transparency feel acceptable. I hope this is what it was. All you really need to know is what he became.

What’s that?

I guess, a calling card. Or an ever-incomplete story, doubling back on itself, creating a future that narrates the past, you know. I don’t really feel that way now, but my fixation on him was something comparatively brazen and alluring.

I hardly noticed.

When he first came to me, he was still only partially real, a construct wearing a name and a face; untethered to my psyche. I wish this was how I remembered him, as a human artifact of compression. This is the ideal form for all people, I think.

He entered with an understated silence and sat just off to the side of me, playfully pointing his perception at the words I wasn’t singing. I was playing “Everything to Nothing” by Manchester Orchestra. I wasn’t supposed to be there. You see? This is why I think I wrote my own undoing.

Because you weren’t singing some words.

Yes. And no. Precisely.

What?

Don’t concern yourself with that; the answer wouldn’t be satisfying or nearly as arbitrary as you hope.

Ok.

The song murmured through the grit-caked-convictions of the strings, a voice from the past singing the words:

You,

Mean,

Everything to nothing.

That’s right.

You,

Mean,

Everything, to Nobody!

To me.

You might wonder how someone could simultaneously exist as a state of value and a critical measurement of it. I suppose I once did without realizing it, in the manner that it was immense, but only briefly noticeable. But when I looked into Errow’s sprawling blue eyes, I understood he was not much different from a seizing paradox, except that he was the opposite.

Did I ever end up telling you the lake house story?

Yes. Several times. The one with the Dahmer ex boyfriend.

I, of course, was not dating the actual Jeffery Dahmer, but that remains to be how I picture him. His Character Definition imprisoned behind aviator glasses.

Yeah. Ha, sorry.

Why did you send me that message? Did you think I wanted to hear your voice?

What? No.

I guess metaphorically it was an attempt to preserve a moment happening somewhere in my mind, but I was very drunk. I met Criss Angel’s cousin that night, you know.

I know.

That I was drunk or that I met Criss Angel’s cousin?

I don’t remember.

If it weren’t for my commentary, you’d be nothing. Just an ever shifting presence in the form of a shadow.

I sure wish I was nothing.

The type of person who says that doesn’t usually believe in superstition. Normally, they would believe in something like true love.

That fucking penny.

My focus somehow drifted from the penny; it was simply the copper colored approximation of his fear, which I was used to. But the rather shy, smudged, Scotch tape, pressed to the face of the small holiday gift box stood out immediately. It was perplexingly the most ordinary and uncouth thing adorning it; Fingerprinted, and stuck to itself at one end. To this day I’m disturbed by things that feel momentously ordinary. As if they only adhere to clean, dry, nostalgia. The box was wrapped in holographic green paper (which did not burn very well), and was given to me under the pretense of an empty hallway with others at the end, looking away. Inside was an instrument of fate, as Errow believed (in practice).

Between us, there was an understanding that there was a knife in the box. He understood this because of the penny. I understood it because the only thing more palpable to me than his fear was my responsibility in shielding him from it. I then wondered if it were possible to be a person as a form of “residue.”

I later grasped that this was foolish, along with sentimental destruction. Though I do wonder what would have happened had I catastrophized differently.

Only you would try to make worrying a reflective state.

Well, I still don’t know why the letter disappeared the second time, but what scared me most is how it resisted erasure the first time.

You were very drunk.

That never surprised you?

Just that once.

I guess so. I still think it was winter in an analogous sort of way.

The roads were not snowy, but untouched in the same way.

How could you remember that?

I was there?

I’m surprised.

Tonight I am the best I’ll ever be

Because I have a chance to be half of you.

The first line used to be “Tonight/ I stress, tonight!” I must’ve altered it because I felt the anticipation of being held accountable for loving.

Awkward hands, the wet grip of sweat

(A pigeon wrenching a worm from the ground)

The relentless thudding of anticipation turns me stale, unnaturally sweet.

“H-hello” crawls up my throat, you nod.

The next thing I remember was in

One of the darker parts of the road.

The headlights sprayed a fuzzy stream of

light over the grayish pavement and static grass.

I remember the roads being covered with snow,

All still painfully blank.

(The roads were not snowy, but untouched in the same way).

We were not talking, but I was thinking about lying.

I feel split by my own perception sometimes. A particle-wave existence for a particle-wave being, I suppose. I’ll summarize the letter here.

Dear Judith, I know it has been a long time since I last wrote, and if I know you, you probably thought I forgot.

I did think he forgot. It was one of those times where I had become a hopeless catalyst with idealist motivations, once again. But when he compared himself to a magic 8-ball

It was the world’s worst magic 8-ball, actually.

Well how the hell would I know?

I was never sure exactly how a magic 8-Ball could be subjected to such scrutiny, as if to imply one omniscience were of a higher value than another.

Shortly after the letters stopped coming, while I was very drunk, I took a pair of scissors to each envelope, eviscerating the notes like I could somehow sever the meaning from the words, and stowe that away behind my dresser instead.

You don’t even remember what they said.

You’d think that. But no, actually it’s much worse. Well, I guess it’s not much worse than before.

Capable people stand in the craters

Meeting there, to discuss the insides of our chests,

(Us darker disciples)

But I am not afraid of what I’ll become.

When water no longer sings like in the wild, it is a civilization. Planned obsolescence.

First the scathing truth in your voice,

Now a candid heartbeat, A weathered lighthouse eye.

I beg: (please save me from the cold).

Small children created the world, native only to his breath, but sorrow from his empty lungs would’ve been enough.

When yearning became the beginning

and resumed once more our hearts,

and tragedy’s subtle blush.

Somewhere there was a deviation

a small, silvery voice under the cover

(Underneath was the story of the world)

That spoke desirable lies

and ruined me becoming you.

Blame poisons the present, re-writes our first

times together and calls us new.

I can’t escape my life: being someone, but I plan

to find you there in the craters, softly speaking

and close the loop

Before time has elapsed and it starts once again

with us, and the sky no longer blue.

I thought of that last line when I was on a walk in the woods. My thoughts took a wind-like shape, dispersing the leaves in a flurry of inconsequential truth.