Pier 45

The day is perfect, after all, the temperatures not too hot and a soft warm breeze in the air. In Swedish we call it pre-summer; we have more seasons than you lot and such an obsession with the weather, but can you blame us? Monday afternoons bring just the right amount of people and no one demands you share their leisure with them. The trees along the river are slowly turning green and though the forecast called for clouds they are pleasantly absent. 

My hollow shell of a person sits parked on one of the wooden benches, trying desperately not to crumble into the brown swells, despite lack of a backbone. I read short stories, riveting but humanly flawed, and I try to guess whether I could do it better. The problem seems not to be perfection but humanity. People cannot reach you if you are not real. But you won't reach them, either. 

After a lifetime of unmovable Truths, I stand suddenly washed up on a whole new shore, not certain of anything. It is supposed to be liberating, but so far I grapple with even the simplest tasks of existing. All the things that supposedly made me a person (or made me a supposed person, really) lie shipwrecked in the sea behind me, bobbing nervously and far enough out of reach that I may just let them go. 

Perhaps I turn out to be not who you wanted. Perhaps I am not what I expected. It seems late to start over. 

But what choice do I have?