write to be

I am old and battered and bruised. I have here in front of me a letter from 30 years ago. It is an honest letter. Anguished and unfulfilled; looking ahead to life. A future that wasn’t to be even then, and wouldn’t be ever since. The letter tries, earnestly, to explain to me how plans were fizzling; in fact, how the agenda was increasingly blank. And being without hope or agenda- for love, or life- is beautifully, romantically tragic, but in the end, still tragic.

I hold that letter, I know why I wrote it to myself all those years ago. I understand what I was trying to do, but I know now like I knew then- the emptiness never goes away, it only swings between possibility and reality, future and present. It could come some day, or be right now, but emptiness will always be the same- unfulfilled, unknown, hollow.