a meeting
would my past selves like me now?
The girl I was at five is very disappointed in me.
She’s spent all week waiting for Saturday, because that’s the day her dad is going to take her to the public skate, and they’re gonna practice going fast together. Yesterday, he came home with a big blue box from the hockey rink, with a red Riedell logo stamped in the middle, snow-white figure skates inside. She’s tried them on, spent an hour walking all over the carpet, even though he yelled at her that she was going to ruin the blades doing so.
She asked me if I ever went to the Olympics. I look away, I tell her I was too scared to even ask for lessons as a kid. I still can’t do an axel. My skates are a thousand miles away. I haven’t been to the rink in two months.
At six, she’s annoyed.
She sees my hair now, choppy bangs brushing the tops of my eyebrows. She spent all of six months growing hers out long enough to push behind her ears, she’s never cutting it again. At least the rest of my hair is still long. She likes that it’s a little wavy at the ends.
Eight years old, I see myself now, and I’m disappointed at my lifestyle.
I go out on the weekends, I smoke before to calm my nerves. I always said I’d never give in. I did. I share drinks with my friends, we order another round. I’m not good like I always thought I would be. I have a cigarette outside the bar when I’m drunk.
The girl I am at twelve is disgusted at me.
She spends all her time at home in a bedroom reeking of Lysol. She’s just finished spraying some on her legs, in fact—she had to quickly clean herself after brushing the table by accident. The table is dirty because her brother just ate at it, and her brother is dirty because he goes to school, which is full of children and snot and unwashed hands. She knows better than to go to school, she started being truant months ago. Her mom tried, begged, pleaded with her—nothing. Her mom doesn’t know what she knows.
What she knows is cleanliness. Everyone is contaminated except her, with her six-hour showers under boiling water to heat-sanitize her skin. With her once-a-day bathroom trips, to minimize the time spent in the fecal-particled air. With her not touching, not moving, slippers in the house because she can’t touch the dirty floor, no sleep, no friends, no life. She hears how one time I went to a club and I used the bathroom twice and the floor was sticky with unknown fluids, and then I kissed a stranger in the dark. I touch things and I kiss people and I hold the handrails on the subway. I am covered in germs and dirty beyond saving.
The girl I am at 15 wishes I lived bigger.
She’s sad I never became a ten overnight. She’s sad I still haven’t experienced love. She’s sad that I haven’t overcome it all, that I can travel and move and still feel longing, loneliness, sadness. That I can grow up but I can’t outgrow myself, not yet.
But she says she likes my glasses, she always wanted to get them. She’s happy I started dancing again, that I skate sometimes when I can, and that I can even do single jumps and a scratch spin. I tell her I live in New York, I go to fashion school like I always dreamed. I have a pair of tabis and some ballet flats that look like pointe shoes in my closet, I wear a leather jacket whenever I go out. Pinch me, she says.
She looks at me with awe, I tell her about my strolls in the park. I have friends and we go out together and get lunch. I have friends in multiple cities, even. We keep in touch. I made it to Paris, to Seoul, to Tokyo. I’ve been on a plane more times than I can count now. I go to Toronto every winter to see family. I found a lip combo I like. I know a bit of French. Girls compliment my perfume, my green eyes. I am good at making people laugh.
I hope she’s proud. I hope I will be.
