Dream
I meet my younger self. She is happy, and curious. Sorry, I'm staring, she says. I laugh. It's okay. Stare away. Look, no wrinkles yet! I laugh but then the laugh pulls back as I think of the things she doesn't know yet. What's funny is I want to warn her, prepare her, but her buoyancy and happiness is hard to destroy. What's funny is, also, that she came to find me and saved me from being lost. She's showing me how to get to the motorcycle place. It was right where we were before, she said. We is her, mom and dad, Frank and Vicki, and Ernie. Ernie is still there, waiting, even though he already got his bike. Frank is picking it up for me. But he doesn't know how to ride. Let's get back to him, I tell her. Where are you at right now? I ask her. She giggles and points to Brent Hoover. I have a crush on him, she shyly confesses. Ah I see. Summer school. I whisper to her that he ends up gaining two hundred pounds and loses it. I feel partially bad for telling her but it's a wicked little thing. I can tell she wants to know more but she can't think of how to express it. I am pussyfooting around mines. Leslie does go on to have two kids, I tell her. One boy and one girl, just as she wanted. The girls name is Lily. I watch as little me pouts and says, of course. She always gets what she wants. But I don't tell her what ends up happening. She'll see. I look at her and hesitate. I'm not going to tell her about the divorce. But I wonder if I should warn her. If maybe I can prevent the whole thing. But I decide not to. Too many good things are there too. But she's in for it. And her happiness and naïveté right now is like peanut brittle. So sweet, it covers her like a sheet, but also so fragile. I want to hold her and protect her and tell her to never lose it, no matter all the things that she'll find out. I wished then that my future self would come and do the same to me. Along the pier, the sun sets and the ocean tide pours over the wooden planks and rushes into open doors.
