i have no idea what i'm doing here
but it's always this time of year, and always this type of voice.
these days, i watch your existence play out like an old familiar cassette tape. everything they say, every shining compliment, every mysterious observation. i already know all of it, because i've already said all of it. i wrote it.
and i'm proud and happy and distant and relieved. but there will always be a small corner of my mind, screaming startlingly into the quiet: he played them for me over the phone. he signed the first guitar pick for me. we wrote music together. i was at his first paying gig. that was me. me. me.
but also, i watch the way you look right through all of them, seeing nobody. ghostly, absent. because that was me, too.
i don't remember you looking any better,
but then again, i don't remember you