Future Perfect

It is only hard, I said to myself, because I have not done it before. Three times I've veered away at the last minute, walked on past, or pretended to be just looking. So I will do it in the future perfect, now, having already done it; I will revisit this place, the place I always went, back in those days when I lived in Portland, and I was going to massage school. And I will look around with nostalgia, slow to respond to the living people, busy greeting the ghosts; the living people will come slowly into focus, and I will order in some distraction, not the distraction of anxiety, which would be ridiculous, but the distraction of the past, which everyone knows is nobly confusing.

So I turned in at the door, into the old place. They had new people behind the counter. I had to explain what I wanted; they didn't already know, as they used to. Times change.