A MEMORY WITH AN ENDING
Jul 2015
I met my memory for Yerbe Mate.
Our legs stretching, too long
underneath tiny tea tables.
"I might have stalked you a little bit" she says,
Handing me a slip of paper. "I may have also read your poetry."
It was a poem about what beverage she would be.
I neatly fold it up and hand it back.
"It's perfect".
"Keep it" she says.
"Keep it?"
"Yeah, don't make it weird. Just keep it".
The memory and I found a bridge.
There was a bike path leading underneath towards the sun
with a guard rail that separated us from the seaweed.
All the trinkets in my pockets had been emptied onto rocks
when we sat against the guard rail.
I held hands with my memory as she spoke,
"My mom doesn't let me show my sisters Pokemon, because of evolution.
She's one of those super Christians".
"I'm an atheist
but everything I've ever prayed for has come true,
so, I don't know anymore" I replied.
My memory sat on a guardrail.
My head leaned against her thigh.
Her fingers ran through my hair.
I tucked a secret into my phone, like a prayer,
"There are so many things I want, that I can't have".
"Sorry" I then said out loud, standing up to face her.
Her forehead into my chest, my arms held her
eyes tangled somewhere in the seaweed
"I have a song stuck in my head" she said.
"Sing it for me".
"I don't know the whole song".
"Sing the part you know".
"Well, I only know one line, and it's weird".
"Sing the one line, I don't care how awkward it is, I wanna hear it".
She sang,
"Maybe I'm only in love when you wake me up".
"You didn't tell me you were a GOOD singer" I exclaimed in shock.
My memory reached for my collar
a delicate touch beneath my necklace
"What's this symbol?"
I started my confession,
"It was the game of thrones martel sigil. People think it was for the show but it was for my stepdaughter...
A tattoo was a bad idea. I can eventually get rid of a necklace".
We noticed the sun setting.
"I've never been the one to win it all" I sang and swung around a lampost
I stared at my memory awhile... then turned at the sunset
I scaled and sat atop the slanted concrete wall beneath the bridge
and scribbled a note, that read:
Dear god: please let me kiss her, Amen".
I still don't know if that's how God works.
"You aren't allowed to say I'm a good singer when you sound like that"
shouted my memory from the bottom of the concrete. "It's like watching a live music video."
I ran down and held her against the guard rail between us and the seaweed
Our lips dared each other to inch closer.
She pushed her forehead into mine.
"What'd you write?" she asks.
"It's not for you" I replied,
"If you want to read it you have to climb up there and find it".
"Ooh you bum" she crawled up the wall "Where is it?"
"That's the fun, you gotta find it"
She finds it.
"This handwriting is awful I literally can't read it".
"I didn't want you too" The sun set and it had become dark.
"Do you think it's dark enough to climb that building?"
My memory and I made our trek back through the woodsy path
It was pitch black.
"We're gonna get eaten by cannibals"
"There's cannibals in Maine?"
"There are in this particular part of Maine."
We got to a school and started stacking milk-crates like a staircase. My memory braced the crates with a wooden pallet.
"You're brilliant."
"I have good ideas sometimes".
Testing the water, my feet scaled the landmark.
Then came down to support it while the memory went up.
After she was safe, I followed her.
Adrenaline hit us.
"We're on a freaking roof right now."
"Are we going to fall in?"
"Is there like a trick to walking on rooftops?"
My body plopped down watched the sky.
"Oh my god... Please look at the stars with me " she lays next to me.
"You know how I've been saying I've been transforming a lot of good little virgin girls
Into blood lusting sirens as of late?" She says.
"Yeah."
"I'm starting to think it's not just girls".
"Can I say something cute? Or would that make things harder?" I asked
"Say it". Her breath was sweet.
"You have the body of the most gorgeous woman I've ever slept with. The personality of the woman I fell in love with, the dorkiness of my first high school girlfriend. The eagerness to get to know me of someone new. After my ex left me I said I would never love again. I've been having tons of meaningless sex striving for company. Grief fucking my feelings away, but you... I would buy a fucking house with you".
She kissed me.
"Why do you have to be so perfect?" she sobbed.
We stay like this. She moans and wiggles. We hold our bodies together.
You wanna know what that note on the rocks said?" I ask.
"Yes."
I tell her.
"I'm a terrible wife" she says.
"and I'm a terrible atheist".
-
Nicholas M. Coulombe