I know time has passed...

When my bangs get too long, and the hairs tickle the space between my eyebrows.

When my nail meets a hard surface, and leaves an ugly, unsymmetrical, edge.

When the tea I forgot, sits cold on my desk.

By the number of new details, that make sudden appearances, in stories my mother has many times retold. The accuracy of her image, gate-kept by age.

Similar to my own reflection. I look more myself every year, I’d like to think.

Wearing in my skin, till it fits just right.

I can tell time is passing, by the resemblance in my surroundings.

Mannerisms and habits collected, like rocks on the beach, during trips to the lake.

And my rock collection is pretty huge.

Reactions and emotions I’ve come to perform, once rehearsed in my very own home, I realize.

Grandpa liked his martini’s wet. And grandma’s always been superstitious. And mom can’t cry until she’s alone. And dad sings his words without realizing too...

Suddenly all around me I see myself? And feel so embarrassed I’d thought to claim author,

to think for a moment, I could be so original.

Rather, a sum, of my predecessors’ contradicting echoes.

A subconscious reference. An endless malapropism.

You move away and replace all your mirrors. You sell your favourite jacket. You cut your dead ends. You write poetry about goodbyes. You give up on hating things that will never change.

You accept your position as an overgrown weed, in a neatly trimmed yard.

Until you follow every mole on your skin to it’s maker, and realize age is only distance.

I’m a five minute walk from my freshman year, and a three hour plane ride from my high school self, and three glasses of wine from my first time in love, and one argument away from the child under her covers.

I saw where the horizon meets the prairie, covered in snow. Only white, and then blue.

I could’ve mistaken it for the ocean. Waves, without an end.

Time is unfolding upon itself. It does not escape, nor erase.

I can only hold them, as I try and hold myself.

I can only become over and over, wading further into the water.

As their tiny figures become blurrier on the shore.

And I begin to forget them.

But all it takes is a moment— without warning, or permission— like a stray hand snags a loose thread,

unraveling the sweater, tearing a hole. Revealing a past self.

A stranger in my arms.