Fingerprints.

You popped up on my computer today.

My Skype went through a system update and by some technical mismanagement my profile picture changed to a picture of you.

I can't remember when or why I had changed it years ago. Maybe it was one of those cute couple-y things we succumbed to back then; the exact reason escapes me. The years have managed to trim the fuzzy edges of my memory of our relationship. All I'm left with is the stripped down core: we were good, right up until the point where we weren't. Nonetheless, I felt a sting. In that picture, your hair went past your eyebrows which could only mean it was taken a few weeks before we called it quits. You're sporting a 5 o'clock stubble, which rounds out the sombre look you wore so often. It's the image of you I've carried around all these years -- worn out and shabby, but composed in your own way.

You were a P.O. Box, a few swift strokes of the keyboard and a low-end web camera I stared into day in and day out. Continents still separate us after all these years, as it rightfully should. Why did you make a digital appearance again today after so many years of absence? My guess is as good as any. It hardly even matters. Fate and destiny is a phase that I've thankfully grown out of. After all, symbols and signs are what we make of them.


Since that juncture of my life, I've been wary of online communication. Everyone is the idealized version of themselves here, myself included. It's all quite formulaic.

Hide as much as you like!  Reveal as little as possible!  Be intellectual up to a point!  Write with wit!  Care but don't care too much because the world is going to end anyway!  Words are like windows so choose them carefully!

It amazes me how much everyone has been avoiding physical contact with each other. Just look at how seamlessly our interactions have been formatted into web protocols over the last couple of years, i.e. count the amount of conversations you have on your phone/online vs. the ones you have in the real world.

I suppose it's the safest way of keeping each other company. Safer than sharing a common space with someone new. Safer than whatever it was that we had.