"the one about the time travelers"
Ryanne Kap
Ryanne Kap (she/her) is a Chinese-Canadian writer from Strathroy, Ontario. Her work has been featured in Grain Magazine, Ricepaper Magazine, Watch Your Head, Feelszine, Scarborough Fair, and The Unpublished City Volume II. In 2020, her short story “Heat” won first place in Grain Magazine’s Short Grain contest. Ryanne studied English and creative writing at the University of Toronto Scarborough and is currently pursuing an MA in English at Western University.
“I wrote this poem after ‘The Time Travelers,’ which is season 8, episode 20 of How I Met Your Mother. So many elements of this sitcom fascinate me: the unique plays on the 20-minute structure; the clever takes on 20-somethings and the crudeness of its early-2000s humour; all the debts it owes to Friends (see the title of this poem); the idealized picture of New York City; the specific type of people that inhabit it. It’s a show I hate to love and love to hate, but this episode is, to me, HIMYM at its best: a weird conceit paired with striking emotional resonance. The idea of speaking with future versions of yourself and then realizing that it’s all the product of lonely projection — Josh Radnor sells it perfectly. I wanted to take on that image, that feeling, and imagine myself into it in a way that both indulges and resists the conceit.”
20-years-from-now me
walks into a bar
we discuss how a lifetime of
holding tension has thrown
out our shoulders
i don’t ask her what we’re doing
or who we love i just want to know if
we’re still dragging ourselves
through each day or if we’ve
found some way to make
our lungs light again
20-hours-from-now me
takes a seat across from us
and tells me it begins tomorrow
this hunt for Happiness and it’ll
restart every time i twirl scissors
between my palms but the
important thing is that it starts again
20-years-from-now me agrees
says she’s found small peace in
odd arrangements of daffodils and
binging old sitcoms about white
people in new york
20-minutes-from-now me takes the last
seat and begs us to shut up because
when that first shot of tequila hits
the room will be swimming in strobe lights
i take the shot and tell my selves we spend
too much energy projecting forwards or backwards
maybe we should stay right here for once
there’s a commercial break’s worth of time
before we all agree
