Visits

April, it would seem, has become the month of visits in our little apartment.
Parents, friends. My cousin, the comedian and film maker, six years younger than I am.. I hadn't spoken to him, really, in years. He's all grown up now with wild woolly red hair.
My husband's best friend - highschool friend, was here last week. We hadn't seen him in a year before that.
He spent 8 months in Ghana, but they talked about their high school calculus.  Throwing them back, back to nostalgia.

Sometimes, when you talk to someone from your past, you look across the cavern of time and experiences and strangers that make up their life and you still see them there - standing on the other side - across a great stretch of change, but still, in essence, who you remember.

And you smile at each other.
Wave.
Send smoke signals.

And maybe you'll never stand on the same ground again, but it's nice to see them there and remember.

And sometimes you look across the abyss and they're gone. The horizon has taken them.
And it's sad.
They could be sitting right across from you: in a chair at a coffee shop, or at a bar.
But they're lost.
And you both wonder when the other finally slipped from view.

I think a lot about these things. I have a lot of figures lost away.
Houses in towns that neither of us live in anymore.
Basements where teenagers hang out; on couches claimed from damp sidewalks.
Shag carpet.
VHS movies.
Collectives that will always exist, but don't seem to bridge the gaps anymore. Little gaps in our brains. Our lives are filled with gaps. And some of them swallow people.