To Old Friends: Part I.
- Charlene Iris
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
Updated: 23 hours ago
I dream about those I no longer speak to.
Old friends. Half-lit rooms.
Echoes of who I was before I knew better.
The dreams are vivid—always.
Like time folding in on itself, pulling me into a moment that never ended.
Untouched by the years. Smooth. Blemish free.
...
I’ve always been fascinated by consciousness,
the strange dance between memory and dream,
the way the mind wanders where the heart once broke,
as if feeling what it couldn’t keep.
I stir, tangled in meaning.
Was I just recalling,
or were you dreaming of me too?
As if memory were a door we reached for,
at the same time.
...
And even now,
years later, lives later,
it’s hard not to see you.
Not directly. Not always.
But you show up in the fabric of things:
in the way I describe a show I know you’d love,
in the jokes I know would crack us up,
in the way I soften, instinctively,
over something I would’ve once sent your way.
Some connections fade.
Others just step quietly into the background,
not gone,
just elsewhere,
living inside moments you’ll never see but forever shaped.
...
And the strange thing is,
in a world full of people just like me,
who think in the same spirals,
I’d still share those moments with you,
not because everything ended kindly,
not to rekindle or reopen,
just the simple knowing:
you would understand.
...
That kind of knowing doesn’t dissolve;
it just settles, moves underground,
and every so often rises
in a line from a book,
in a stranger’s voice,
in something so small it almost doesn’t make sense,
until I feel the tug.
That small, emotional invitation,
no address, no RSVP—just the quiet ache:
I wish you could’ve seen this.
...
There are moments I thought I’d figured out.
Conversations I walked away from with washed hands.
Lines drawn. Decisions made. Certainty intact.
But Memory doesn’t always agree.
She waits, rearranges, changes shape when you look again.
It’s disorienting how something once solid can blur just slightly out of place.
Like watching a film you swore you remembered,
only to realize half the scenes were never really there,
and the ones that were somehow don’t look the same in this light.
But not every shift announces itself.
Some things change without ever asking you to notice,
like pulling that old sweater from the back of the closet,
familiar in weight—
but just doesn’t fit the way it used to.
And you’re not sure if it changed,
or you did.
...
I don’t go calling for the past.
It has its own way of showing up,
not to pull me back,
or reopen anything,
but maybe just to be seen—
not as something I need to fix,
but something I once loved,
and still do,
Softly.
Silently,
Without demand.
...
Maybe that’s why you still find me in dreams.
Not as a wish.
Not as a wound.
Just a presence my sleep hasn’t learned to forget.
I hope I haunt you too.
Nothing dramatic.
Just the occasional pang when the moon looks suspiciously beautiful.
For what it’s worth,
-Charlene Iris
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