ghosted ovenbird I still love every person I have ever loved, even if the shape of that love has dramatically changed over the years. Sometimes it seems that I still love people that I never really loved at all. The thing is that love leaves a residue, like the sticky ghost left over when you pull a bandaid off. The attachment is gone but the place where a life touched yours retains vague adhesive properties and attracts lint in the shape of what was once pressed against your skin. And perhaps the gummy circle points to a place that was wounded, or a place that won’t quite heal, or a place where a scar lies like a pale worm across the ligaments that hold you together. Maybe you pick at it, trying to remove the last of the adhesive, maybe you scrub with vinegar and baking soda and dish soap, but it never really works. And so love insists upon itself even decades after any real contact has ended and this sometimes compels me to do stupid things, like send messages to people I haven’t spoken to in years, because curiosity is a form of love, and it’s the one I can express without coming across as completely deranged. All of which is to say that I sent a message to someone I went to high school with and haven’t had contact with since. I said something along the lines of, “It’s strange, isn’t it, the way we lurk on everyone’s social media but almost never say hello? It’s something I do myself, and I realize that I’m doing it to you, and I wanted to ask how you’re doing and what your life looks like now.” Pressing “send” felt like Russian roulette (though with rubber bullets—painful but not fatal). I quickly received a brief response and felt the thrill of the possibility of a conversation. I replied, asked a few vague questions, nothing too personal or invasive. Over a week has now passed with no reply. I suspect there will not be one. And all the questions I have inside me are giving up hope for answers. I wanted to know: who are you now? Who did you become? What path did you take from the sixteen year old I knew to the adult you are now, already in your mid forties, kids of your own? I wanted to know what memories you hold that I have lost. I wanted to know how you remembered me. I will not get to know any of these things and the rebuff does hurt, just a little. Because it seems that curiosity doesn’t flow both ways. While my mind has often travelled in your direction your mind has not thought to turn to me. Maybe I was more unimportant than I ever imagined, not even worth the effort of a few dozen sentences. So perhaps I have learned something about you after all. I have learned that the place where our lives once touched means nothing to you. I have learned that you are not interested in wondering, or in a chance to know me as an adult. You couldn’t extract what you wanted from me twenty five years ago and I have nothing you want now. I won’t reach out again. You believe I am nothing and I will oblige, becoming the ghost I’ve always been. 260206 what's it to you? who go blather from