i don't know, here is something.

I remember you waiting in the car in the sunshine.  It was my 3rd birthday party and you were afraid of the magician my parents had hired, and I was so sad you wouldn’t come in, because we were big in each other’s lives.  I don’t remember anything else, like how we got big in each other’s lives, whether we played baseball together or went to preschool together, I don’t remember a single thing except that moment, receiving the news that you would not be able to come in for my birthday, and how cute I thought it was that you were afraid of magicians.  We didn’t speak again until we both won Most Talented senior year and took a single picture together, smiling and holding toy guitars, and then went our separate ways. 

And for thousands of days, I haven’t thought of you once, completely forgot you existed, but I think of that moment and it warms me, I want to reach out and reminisce about the magician and all the other moments I don’t remember, when we were small.  I want to know what the hell you have been up to all these years.  I wonder how people who were once close and warm and familiar could ever become strangers, or I wonder if we are still familiar and I just have to appeal to our shared distant history, not worrying whether you will think I’m pathetically grasping for the past.  I walk along the seashore collecting shells, collecting connections, becoming familiar, adding friendly faces to my collection, but the further down the line I go, the old faces fade or fall off the shelf, and it makes me wonder why I bother working on things that will only drift away one day.

Most days I pretend to be indifferent, but other days I break through, I say “remember the time,” and then I hold my breath waiting for what you will say next.