There are some places that haunt of certain people.
The overlook.
The car, stopped, idling to keep warm,
in park.
The lights boil up from the city below like a spilled cup of population. A switch clicks on. It’s the promise of adventure. A series of mixtapes. A slow drive to sea air in the small hours of the morning. A night spent in uncomfortable but content unity. The most organic type of togetherness.
There’s a hum around these haunted venues that hazes the senses. It’s a time machine that only two people can feel. Sometimes when one drives by a spot, they look at it and remember a time. Pulled to the past, thinking about gone-away thoughts and distant memories. People that are long gone, but not through death.
The boxes.
Two boxes with windows
stacked.
The winding lane below. A perfect place to change a life. Uncomfortable nights spent on hard floors before long days and finally the warm embrace of an altogether too-small bed. Habits to coexist and complete another’s being amalgamate amongst the cramped spaces. The unconditioned reactions are nearly enough to confirm it. The responsibility of another’s contentment is easy enough at first.
A memory is placed in storage, and voluntarily or involuntarily, one may dust it off and experience the biting, nagging pain of a time since past or a decision made wrong. The vertigo of a realization that’s been stumbled upon before returns with force and vigor, and the pit of the stomach expands into a void.
The hills.
Two hills among others, not our own, but on our own
alone.
A short piece of a much longer path with swaths of life alongside. A roof and a hot meal. A paycheck and a community of two or three. No running water. Rainstorms and songwriting and lovers and fighters and lovers again. Closer than two, a joint effort. Late movies turn into naps, cavity prevention turns into an inside job. Two hours is nothing.
This is where we fell in love.
This is where we laughed about dumb stuff for far too long.
This is where we talked for a long time about nothing and
everything.
Sometimes, these memories don’t inhabit a latitude and longitude, but instead choose ourselves as their vessel. What if a being, solely by virtue of breathing, manifested their own memories? What if a person felt as if their own skin was reminder to things past?
The alembic processing of a million little pieces, swept into a dustpan as if the human form were thrown repeatedly and harshly against a stone wall. Cleansing the mind, but maintaining the memories of love and life. Looking back isn’t always bad.
The opaque clarity of ears ringing. A broken tone cutting through confusion.
Clean, cold, fresh air cuts across an exposed face. Instead of shrinking away, it invites it as a sensation. Any sensation. The bite of being alive. The sharp knife of the here and now.
To exist. To maintain. To remember. Occasionally, these are enough.
