I wish we could have rewound time and been other people. We could have been strangers having a drink in an airport bar, formed a friendship that lasted through relationships and kids. We could have been neighborhood kids who grew up together, suffered through parental rules and high school. Or maybe, just neighbors who watched out for each other, swapping stories and checking in while bringing in trash bins.
At the very least, perhaps we could have pretended to be other people for a time, for a week or two— erasing past foot prints, created new ones in some distant soil. All the while, we could have worn different faces. You could have chosen the mother’s face you’d have liked to have worn. And I could have chosen a daughter’s face that perhaps wasn’t some reminder of what you wanted to forget or ignore.
If we could have worn different faces, made new footprints in different places-- Perhaps our burdens of rage and loss and fear would have drifted away like runaway balloons at a child’s birthday party long before that day in July that haunts me still when I had to reach down to close your frightened eyes.
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