The Melodramatic Missing of a Missionary (or Several Missionaries, if You Will)

Dear ...........

After you left, I left your memory.

I left it right there by the side of my metaphorical road of life, because everything in my life is metaphorical.

My life is funny, grand, smashing, TOO SICK, adventurous, awkward and all sorts of good things that you left me with and I decided to keep.

I decided many things since you left, which is rather surprising for me, because as you know, I'm rather indecisive.

Know I'm missing you, though, because when you left I had learned all sorts of good things, but I felt missing-ness, too.

I felt a secondhand joy that bites the nose, because gosh, you were just an amazing kid doing stunning things, but my heart was a little hole-punched after you left.

Hole-punched after the rambunctious shenanigans we shared, because that is what the young 'uns do and we were definitely young 'uns and we still are young 'uns, but you are there and I am here.

And I am undulating in my life right now and you know exactly where you are going today, tomorrow, next week, six months, a year from now.

A year and you won't even know yourself and you won't even know me and I won't know you and I won't know I.

I won't be me and you won't be you, at least not the you that I knew and liked.
I knew it would happen before you left, I knew that when you get back I will see you in a different way, like an image in a refracted mirror created by laser-point pens and you will see me as if through a blurry contact lense in a mixed bag of emotions.

Mixed bag of funniness, grandness, smashingness, TOO SICK-ness, adventurousness, and I can guarantee that there will be some awkwardness.

There will be the things you left me with, but new things as well because while you were gone I had to take some string and clay and fill in the hole-punches.

Fill in the missing bits until "y'all" got back and could fill them in again.

Fill them in in a different way, because some of the clay cemented in the hole that "y'all" left in me.

"Y'all" left, not "you all" or "all of you" because my Texan friend filled in some of those holes with big smiles and constant "y'all-ing".

          You see, I had to do something to survive, because I've undergone a bit of identity crisis while you are away and I would like to warn you that when you get back I will not be the same as when you left me. People are not like that. We are not like your old room, or the books on your bookshelf. We morph and it's psycho.

          That is why I left your memory. Because you would morph too, and it would be for the best, but it would be painful to look back when you come back and I don't know you.
My one hope is that we'll still be somewhat friends.
I hope we will, and I hope you hope so too.
If you do, I think it might be so.

Yours truly,

...............

An Interesting Paradox

It's supposed to snow tonight. Five A.M. is what the weatherman said. But I don't know if I believe him. "Trust not in the arm of flesh." Or that's the gist of it, anyway.
What I do know is what I felt that night; what I felt in my pocket.  We were walking back in the dark, and it was windy and piercingly chill. The leaves were blowing down the sidewalk just like they do in the scary movies. I was wearing brown boots that crunched the blowing leaves as we walked. I put my hands in my pocket and I felt something. A pebble? No, a marble. It was cold and hard, and my fingers were cold and stiff, but within the lining of my pocket I clenched my cold fingers around the cold marble and suddenly both began to warm. An interesting paradox, like our philosophical discussions. The cold meeting the cold made both warm. I think I may have discovered cold fusion.