afterimage

photo by catherine campbell

afterimage

third year srija sengupta

Hello to the one I left behind.

You live in the moment of a decision I once made, the choice I cast away to make room for the one I eventually chose. You live in the push and pull of them, the gritty in-between of thought and action. You live in them, and then I push you to the path I did not take, forcing you to stumble down a road I myself will never go down. There are many of these moments, big and small, and you live in every single one of them. 

Sometimes I made those choices without a second thought. A split-second decision to take a shortcut to class, a choice to buy a new necklace, all little things I took from you. Sometimes I scrawled out pros and cons lists, debating myself in the mirror before making a firm decision, hoping, praying I somehow did not make the wrong one. 

You’re the one who took my discards. You took the scraps of all I left behind, bones and pieces of meat I’d never deign to eat. Did you make something new out of them? Did you build a castle with those femurs and skulls, mortar the walls with the marrow I somehow never sucked out? Did you engineer a home out of the shadows I left you with, a glittering heat-wave hallucination that shattered as soon as one touched it?

How did you even live like that? Did you grow up underground, trapped and wishing for sunlight? Did you steal moments of happiness where you could, looking over your shoulder every time? Did you breathe in fear, wondering with every moment whether I would steal it from you?

Is that too bleak? I wonder if I, like Prometheus betraying Zeus, somehow tricked you into the worst of the blessings, left you with ash-covered fat and sucked-out ribs while taking the juicy, fresh meat for myself. Did I leave you with any substance at all?

But maybe you like the choice left behind. There were many choices I made with lots of regret- maybe that was me taking the worst of it, and you taking the best for once. Maybe, even when I am making my worst mistakes, you’re living the good life, breathing free and triumphant. Maybe sometimes, you’re the one pushing me, forcing me onto a path you’ll never walk down. 

I don’t think I’ll wonder about you anymore. I think I can leave you behind for good—because I know that no matter if I make a good choice or bad, at least one of us will win.