You used to say you loved finding the notes I had written to myself.
Hastily written reminders scrawled on scraps of paper
that lost meaning the second the ink dried on them.
I don’t leave so many notes any more.
It’s not that I’ve gotten better at remembering things,
in fact, it’s quite the opposite.
Sometimes I come upon some of the notes from long ago and,
rather than being the author, I become you.
I puzzle over the meaning of the name written on the torn paper.
I question the quote left on the back of a book mark.
I ponder the random pattern of numbers, clearly not a phone number.
Yes, it is a mystery to me where these things came from and what they mean.
As if some former me was leavening a trail of breadcrumbs
back to some long forgotten version of myself.
blue sky infinite 
When this happens to me, I tend to feel two things: affection for the past version of me and relief that I am no longer the past version of me. In causing me to remember that, this poem helps me reinforce a loving-kindness meditation I learned, “May I be happy, may I be peaceful, may I be free from sufferning.” Thank you!
Thanks, Aishling! I do wonder sometimes at the stray trails of my life. The mystery of how I got to today.
Shows how little we know ourselves, I suppose…