I see the email in my inbox
past the monotony of checking every box "read"
for the first time in nearly six years.

A poem
selected and sent
on the day.
The way mine was
so many years ago.

I login
just to look.
To gaze upon a world
I had left
lifetimes ago.

I see the scattered pieces
of a distant past.
My past.
Laid nearly bare,
but for a dusting of memories,
exactly as I had left them.

I see the boy I was.
Young.
A teenager.
In high school.

He seems so different.
He's sad, and he doesn't understand why.
Not the way I do.
Not the way he will.

He doesn't know what kind of man he'll be.
What kind of man he wants to be.
He doesn't know yet that we won't be a man.
What we'll be instead is still in the air,
as unsure of my gender now
as he was of his hurt.

As much as I wish it were so,
I can't show him what's waiting for him.
I can't correct his course.
Instead I'll make a quiet return
so that maybe he can correct mine.

For him, earlier

I'll be

Me, Later