In the coffee shop where I sit, I dream of nothing. I'm so glad. I've always dreamt of the future, of what was beyond today, of what I would become. But that meant I was never anything but a shadow of my future self. Now I know that I was someone all along. Everyone, in the present.

I've forgotten what everyone but a few family members and close friends look like now, it's been so long since I've seen them. Ever since I moved to Barcelona, all my communications with the US have involved wistful phone calls and hopeful goodbyes, and I do care about them all, but I've chosen my place. I've changed my name, my citizenship, and any other marker of legalistic identity, and along with them allowed myself a second chance.

<<Mozo, tráigame otro café, por favor.>>

<<Claro, señor>>

I should be dead now, were probability more reliable. By the end of that Junior Year in high school, I planned out a three-pronged suicide that assured no doctor had a chance of saving me. Only ten years ago.

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