So I wrote this just before Christmas. Wasn’t going to publish it, but now I have. That shows me.
Reborn: to exist again.
It seems funny now.
Well, not funny, exactly, but removed. Removed from this reality, my reality. Because I sit here, drinking tea, watching the fire spit its last dying embers onto the hearth, finding myself wondering if it actually was real. Those events were… are… so far removed from this, from the smell of cedar, from the warmth prickling my skin, that I find it hard to fathom; was it really me?
But then what is real?
What is memory?
I look at my hand, now, contemplating its construction; not the fingers, joints, sinew, bone and muscle, no, but the atoms themselves—worlds orbiting stars, infinite space between.
Is that real?
If I touch something I feel it. If I lick something I taste it. But it’s nothing, right? Or mostly nothing? The gaps in the atoms far exceed the matter. The chances of physical contact are remote.
But I oversimplify, I know. There are bonds, energy, kinesis. Forces at play.
We’re magnets, of sorts.
And—yes—back on subject, I guess I could have been considered a bit of a shit-magnet. A portent of bad luck. A jinx. Even though I survived all the shit thrown at me.
Which is why I had the job, I suppose. .
So was that person me? And, more importantly, is it still me?
No.
And no.
What I am now is different to what I was then. And what I was then was different to what came before, because my atoms—yes, atoms again—are different to then, constantly dying, constantly changing.
I am a new person. Nothing about me is the same.
A multitude of reborn cells.
And yet I am the same.
God, this hurts my head.
Was I even there?
Because I am different.
I am.
Fuck, I hate tea.
© JR Bryden, 2019. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from JR Bryden is strictly prohibited.
JR Bryden 
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