Alpha to Omega

So people do change. Though I suppose in this case it’s not really a change at all, more like an overly concentrated version of what I’d always known you were destined to become.

I remember seeing you a while ago and involving myself in discomfort and various dramatic prostrations. There is no reason for that. The pure joy I felt in looking at you without judgement, without complexity, without personal involvement, without intimacy, was unspeakable. I know now that I had never really seen you. And the accuracy and unbiased nature of your reflection was a completely accurate reflection of that person whom I used to be. It only lasted a moment, and then I returned to my surprise at the degree to which you have changed. You had that same expression on your face. The one that you believe prevents anyone and anything from touching you, the one I used to be so attracted to. Only now, it looks harder for you to focus on. Something in your eyes, in your gaunt body and in the way you touch your face a little too much, tells me that you have upgraded your habits to something more serious, more concentrated and better at blocking everything out. Something about the way you’re dressing now makes me reflect with some astonishment that you have lost some innocence that I had never seen in you before. You were always an opportunist, a horrible coveter of purity and joy and my naïve imagined love, but at least your eyes had a kind of sparkle that has now been completely lost. And though I write that spelling out a faint semblance of anger and bitterness, I don’t really feel it. I just know that it is. And it isn’t bad or good or shameful, it just is. I know that the person I see before me doesn’t really exist.

And you’re in a coffee shop and you’re drinking coffee. And I remember one of the first things you ever said to me: “I fucking hate coffee shops and I fucking hate coffee. It’s so pretentious.”