Heartburn and Syndication

As I write this, heartburn creeps up into my breast, toward that little thumbprint where my neck meets my chest, in between the collarbones. I feel like I drank a bottle of Vicks Vapor Rub. My esophagus must look like a rusted metal tube, slowly eroded by caustic acid. I think I may have been a dragon in a past life. Or maybe a muffler.

Earlier, while I was at work, an old friend - and an even older girlfriend - from New York had messaged me. Her communication was unexpected and brought with it a strong nostalgia; memories of our time spent together as unpracticed lovers. She was good to me. She was the girl that would show me a relentless love. Our conversation was not without the opening of some old wounds. She had been the girl who loved me most, but the one I treated most carelessly. Neither of us are without fault; we both badly hurt the other. I have forgiven her, but fear she hasn't yet forgiven me. 

She said something to me today that struck me. I had asked her about a character in a book she had recently read, one she felt reminded her of me. I was curious what she considered the resemblance to be. She said, with candor, that she thought he and I shared the same outlook on life. It saddened me to realize that no matter what her notions were, they were outdated and obsolete, replete with little cotton lies. It has been almost a decade since she knew me like she did then. She's pieced me together from a series of reruns she has watched over and over in syndication.

The images we hold of the ones we've loved and lost have the quality of old photographs. They depict eidolons that exist only as phantoms, fixed forever in the past.