Something Familiar

A wisp of memory calls my eyes to someone across the room. I peer closely as a feather of recognition brushes gently at my consciousness. I see a woman reminiscent of a girl I walked hand in hand through childhood with. At the thought, antipathy swirls a dark finger through my chest. I look away, attempting to separate from this half-formed, unpleasant feeling. I grimace as I hear her laugh quietly to herself, a disquieting cadence from the past. Inexorably my gaze is drawn back to her. How odd it feels to look at her, an anachronism from a time when I was unadulterated and whole.

She looks up and our eyes meet. A small frown ripples across the expanse of her forehead. We stay like that for a moment, just assessing each other. Little sparks of recognition almost pass between us and aspects of familiarity attempt to resurrect in the necrotic tissue of my heart. There may have been a time when two little girls were as close as sisters, but neither of us knows the woman standing before us now. She gives me one last searching glance before her expression clears to a perfunctory polite smile. Whatever she was looking for in me seems to have faded as I see myself disappear from her notice. I decide the woman before me bears little resemblance to the girl from my past. A requiem’s whisper threads between us and that’s all we have in common.

She walks past me dispersing the ghost of a dark haired girl with an unsure smile like smoke. Slowly, naturally, she dissipates from my mind as she joins the smudged peripheral of my surroundings. Just another stranger.