September, 2022

A short piece about forgetting

Your heart breaks so very close to mine on a chilly September morning. I feel your cold feet pressing into my leg despite 1000 miles between us. Cracking my knuckles and steam rising from the mug beside me. Breathing in the hum drum of morning stirrings, juxtaposed against the silence in this home. As the sun walks across the faces of buildings around us, I feel the weight of myself. Faintly. Like a glimmer, or a shadow. 

Tasting salt on my skin; in my hair. Rebirthed by the Pacific and buoyed up and out onto the sand. Beached. Grinning and laughing and running back in. A moment I’d like to grip onto and hold falls away like the sand shedding itself away from my skin. 

Do memories fall away? Or is it just part of them that does? And do I fall away? Or is it just part of me that does?  How long is it until a soul remakes itself so that what was is now only a glimmer. I remember golden light falling on my face. Cast red through my shut eyes. Giggling. Falling on the grass and feeling the firmness of the world spinning below me. Feeling reassurance there.

Is this why when the sun falls on my face, my body trembles, and I feel happy? Warmth on my skin and in the belly rises up and I escape this me for a moment. Transplanted to something simple and real. Something I’ve all but let go. Clutching the last grains of sand. Waiting for the sun to make its way into this room, on a chilly September morning.