past...

Did you ever see a photo of a group of people taken before they knew you, before there was any chance of you being in the photo? Photos of groups of people who you now talk to every day, people who you might write messages of warmth to inside a birthday card. These photos cause a sharp stab of sadness in my middle.

I can usually pin point where my sadness comes from with precise exactness, as if describing to someone where I have left a belonging; “the sadness comes from the third drawer in the white wardrobe, left hand side.” But this sadness? I have no idea of its origin. Where does it come from?

There’s a photo of his familiar face, but young, much younger than I know it. His hand is raised. There’s a photo of another leaning against the wall, grinning. There’s one of her on a fairground ride. I didn’t know any of them then, how could I have? They were in another city and years ahead of me. I was struggling through the mire of my childhood in those years.

His smile, the turn of his head, her long legs, make me miss somewhere I’ve never seen. Why do I yearn to be there, where it is impossible for me to have been? I was elsewhere, maybe smiling, maybe on my own ride. I feel a tightening of longing in my gut. I can’t stop looking at this past, this evidence of how this person came to be, and feeling terribly, terribly sad.