i can see the future

I can see the future.

I can’t understand tarot cards or crystal balls and if you show me your palm I’ll lie and tell you you’re going to have 3 kids when all I can really see are the lines borne from a lifetime of making fists and giving thumbs ups.

But that’s not where the future is held- and I can see the future.

I’m can watch the faces of my friends changing right in front of me. They were as they are, freckles and moles depending on the person. But for the first time in my life, I can see the lines on their face forming. I can see which ones will deepen throughout the years, which imperfections the sun and cigarettes will carve into their face.

When I stare at the people I’ve known my whole life, I remember what they used to look like, I can stare into the face in front of me, but I can see 10 sometimes 15 years in advance.

I can peak into people’s lives too. My sister with a ring newly placed on her finger is going to make me an aunt. Her kids are already running in front of me grabbing at my legs like monkeys and trying to hitch a ride through their suburban house that hasn’t been built yet.

A once idealist friend, after taking an unethical job post college to finally have a bit of cash, is still there in 10 years reassuring everyone who will listen that it’s just temporary until whatever else comes along. A cynicism that only revealed itself in bits and pieces took over in his future, rotting through.

Clairvoyance is tricky though, sometimes I get it wrong. I saw my mother standing in my childhood home at 90 years old baking cookies for all the grandchildren while singing along to Christmas carols. I could see her future like a one woman show happening in front of me. There was set design and detailed costumes. There was dialogue about stories from when I was a kid passed through the generations. The cancer caught me by surprise. So did the cremation.

I still have faith in my psychic abilities despite the set backs. I just hit 25 and everyone knows that’s when the future reveals itself to you fully. It stops obscuring itself with hidden dead ends and surprise trap doors instead hardening in a flat path that’s stable to walk on with a permanence that I don’t understand.

I’m not the only one who can peer into what’s coming. I wonder what people can see in me? Can they see where the smile lines are being etched, where the sunspots that will slowly darken are, what semipermanent character traits that will soon be defining ones.

I can get lost in the future sometimes. I don’t mean to but It’s hard to be in the moment when the future keeps invading the present.

And as hard as I scream and kick, it keeps coming after me.