It’s been 50 years since I’ve last seen you. At least, it seems as if it’s been so. And all the while, the music has kept on playing, the dogs have gone on drooling, the birds have kept on singing, everyone has gone on breathing.

            But, have they? Continuously, without pause? Not for me anyway. Not always.

            50 years. Has it been so?

            Tides turn inward, reflecting on themselves and pulling back, offering stark reminders that they were never alone, but maybe they should have been. Masks are put on, taken off, swapped for others less suitable, slipped off and on again, given (or stolen) back for those that fit better in the first place. There’s been knocking on doors with backward addresses on streets turned upside down, touching God under a thin gray sheet, spoken word whispered in unheard tongues with an unrehearsed voice in reverse.

            You, with your wings and things; me, with my feet. Walking where we need to, waltzing along the edges in the shadows of the ballroom, to the cocktail counter for another drink. These dots of ink trickle where they must—wherever they land—and even when it’s all recited, it only makes sense when it doesn’t.

            50 years and I’ve mourned for it—18,250 suns, 17,650 moons, 200 seasons, and one sky that has not changed. There are paranoid androids now in a future we never asked for—but here it is!—and it’s ours, or none of it ever was. Accepting the absurd in this obsolete existence, we meander through.

            Our hair’s grown long, in need of grooming, but there’s a certain charm to that, and if it were to be explained—or even attempted—there would be no charm left at all. That would be like unraveling the intricacies of the Universe, only to find yourself more lost than you began. Or, worse, to find the answers glare instead of gleam. Leave charisma to the geraniums and orangutans, trust me.

            Schools of thought drown with the fish they study, and if they weren’t to ever come up for air, who would care? Life would go on into the unknown—the only constant—just as it always has, just as it always will; for another 50 years, and another, and so on and so forth, etc. etc., infinitely through all of eternity… and you can add another 50 years onto that!

            You can boil it down and drink it up. You can have cup after cup until you’ve had enough. You can sit in silence by the river and at the same time think of everything at once and nothing at all. You can go place to place to place, meet every person you’ve ever wanted to meet (and those you haven’t, too)—meet them twice, thrice, more times than that (more times than you care to count)—wear every thread of every fashion you’ve ever fancied, taste all flavors of all cuisines that’ve left you whet, brush the first finger of your left hand along the back wall of the back room of the antique shop hiding in plain sight in the tucked away town of Blah-Knows-Where? and leave a line in the dust where no one else ever touched, an unusual scent on the tip of your index that you ponder for but a moment, then flick away…

            (after all, this is just some scribble found on the other side of a torn, wet bar napkin, barely legible; your favorite graffiti in a back alley, painted over but still peeking through; an eclipse glimpsed under the overarching crest of a bleached paradigm)

            …Swim in every ocean, breathe deep at all altitudes, and throw away any moment but the one you are in.

            I have done the same, believe me. Look here; my hands are shaking too. They have been the whole time.

            Yet here we are. 50 years later. It’s been 50 years.

            And when we meet, it still seems as if not a single moment has passed.