Previous Lives
- Aug 3
- 2 min read
By Lilian Pomeroy Edmonds
PROMPT — If only ...
If only I could remember why I love Asian food so much. First choice no matter where I live. I have a different palette than everyone in my family—my current one, I mean. Cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. Dead ones included. All from European ancestry. Not a single ancestor from any other area of the world.
The older I get the more I think I have been here before, but not in the same place where I find myself planted. I am certain I lived a long time ago in a different country. In another century. If only I could remember where.
I’ve always imagined previous lives. Made up stories about myself in some other time. In each imaginary tale, it seems I am always looking for a place I can call home. The past echoes in my soul like my heartbeat. It’s nothing I can control. As a little girl, I loved history—my favorite subject and the only one I could be reasonably expected to pass. The past is me. I am the past.
I couldn’t wait to get out of school and leave home, imagining where I might find my next life. Never liked settling down, as if it was some impossible thing other people could do, but I could not.
As a stripling, and even into my old age, I have never been able to grasp the passage of time. I’ve always been looking forward to moving somewhere else, making another new life with another new name to follow the ones I’ve already lived. The ones I recall.
No matter how old I become, I am certain I do not belong here—in this place, in this time where I am right now. Living in an era in which I do not belong. On a foreign continent.
As I approach my eightieth year, I wonder.
Will I do better the next time?
Lilian Pomeroy Edmonds writes poetry and creative nonfiction. Her most recent work has appeared in The Friends Journal, Paddler Press, Fifty-Word Stories, Planet Paragraph, and Accidental Magazine. She posts on Substack as: @wavingfromadistance and writes from Cape Coral, Florida.
