a doormat called welcome

as if by magic, the house is no longer empty. a lone boy moved in today, his birthday.

it's strange, poetic logic that this day four years ago, we were together: so young and full of wonder. sitting under the stars, i gave him the perfect blue shirt, handpicked from among hundreds of shirts i'd seen all day, and he, in turn, gave me the unconditionalilty of first love.
we lived parallely for a while but then the season changed. i've lived a few lifetimes since and spent many years hurtling away from him, even if it meant hurting him.
but everything's changed now, it's like the stuff of our lives is all rearranged. and i've put enough distance between us to be friends again.
in the new scheme of things, he is little more than a familiar stranger and while i still search for the perfect men's shirt, i do so in a different size.
it's sad no? how even the most well-adjusted among us use defence tactics: run, hide, build a wall. anything to get away from the finality of it all. absolutely necessary for survival i think.
we spoke the other day, about the past and people from our history. the dark, brooding, irresistable a.m. who always felt he belonged somewhere else. he now lives in ny with a rich lawyer ten years older to him.
then there's the hippie girl-of-everyone's-dreams who went on to become an artist and live with an organic farmer. no surprises there. the boy she sketched as a schoolgirl: the boy-with-the-charming-smile is marrying someone else.
and the happy chubby p who fell off the map when he left for some vast university in the united states to become another Indian seeker looking for enlightenment in Americana.
i'm rambling now...what i started out wanting to say is that i couldn't find a better occupant for the house, i feel so fiercely protective of.

welcome home stranger and happy birthday.