Edited by: Maggie Rosenau
I miss things. That’s all I do.
Yet, I don’t always know exactly what I long for. Everything, nothing. Longing is like a tingling madness, moving like a burning cigarette. I miss things that no longer exist, things that won’t come back. And I know they won’t. But I miss them.
Sometimes I miss specific people connected to specific times and places that have become memories now fixed in my mind, despite their disappearance. And these memories grow.
I even miss people I never knew. Strangers who passed me by in intimate or bustling spaces. Those who were always passing by, who I came to recognize though never met. Doesn’t that make them somehow familiar? There were strangers I watched in cafes and others who visited once and were quickly forgotten.
Many times, while walking through a village, I would wonder how different it would be, had it been established a bit more to the North or South. Why is each village in its place? Who built its roads? Who found water and said: we will live here! And now, why are there are so many empty houses?
I miss making my way through small villages and imagining how their people laughed. Now everything withers away, life is as fleeting as a burning cigarette. These days are strange and we are strangers. And we long.
We forget, of course, too. What is memory? Only machines can record everything. I do not remember all that we disagreed on, everything we talked about, laughed at, cried for. I do not remember many things, many situations, cruelties and kindness, difficulties and ease, hunger and satisfaction, clear ways and mazes.
All the endless details… memories collected into a whole existence in which I lived for a while, then had to leave.
I don’t know. I don’t remember everything. And even what I remember now could be unconsciously changed or created by my emotions.
I just remember how I needed to be with you.
