Future Perfect

This post is brought to you by 80s synth chords and spaceships made from tinfoil and fishing wire. I'm wearing epaulettes. Yeah, they came back round. The president is a lesbian. I have a belt that makes me invisible. It's awesome. Errr... just trying to create a little atmosphere, folks. Sheesh. The point is, I'm writing from the future.

Today is four years.

Four years ago she died. Four years ago she was born. Four years ago time stopped. Life paused. She was still and so was the world. 

I didn't have the capacity to think beyond that room, that moment. There was no space for "next." And yet events continued to unfold and now I'm here in the future, and it is... different. It is not how things were going to be. It is so unfamiliar, this place.

Jess-that-was is no more. Life-that-was-to-be has not happened. And it's not bad. But it's not what I had planned.

But maybe this would have happened anyway. Maybe you would still have grown apart. Perhaps this was always going to be this way. You. Him. A tree. Some lemon tart. Two living kids singing Happy Birthday. A look exchanged. And then the turn away: Turn away. We are no more.

He blames today on then. I asked him once: where did it all go wrong? Did you ever feel content? And he recalled a time before she was born. He painted our new house for two small girls to grow in. He was so ready to step in to that life. 

But here we are apart. Four years on. There's one girl, one boy and one little jar of ashes. The same house, paint peeling. Looking out; looking beyond. To what?

Sometimes I try to see. I turn the tarot endlessly and hold my breath for Four of Wands, but normally it's just The World or The Wheel and I'm like yeah, yeah, brilliant, whatever, it's not the card I'd choose, but I'm sure I can twist it to mean something vaguely convenient.

And I think back to Jess-that-was, and all her wants, her hopes. Poor fool. She couldn't know the path that she would walk. Yet here I am, a fool again. The future unfamiliar looms, forever imperfect.

She'll not be there. And I still stand. No, I still walk. Towards... towards... towards...

A raygun and rehydrated food. A robot mixing martinis. A womb that's closed for business. And epaulettes, gold epaulettes. 

Do you think about the future? What do you believe it hold for you, now?