Sometimes the memories come flooding back as though I am right there. They are moments in time that are so embedded in my mind that I can almost touch them. I remember the way the light streamed in through the rickety screen door in the early evening. I remember the glow of red and green Christmas lights that hung in the kitchen. I remember you sitting on the two-seat couch with your guitar and the way your long blond hair hung to one side. I remember the first time I met you and sat with you in your car and we listened to Ani. I remember singing “Fire Door” and “Untouchable Face” drunk on gin and tonics, life and our freedom. You were in search of true love and I was in search of reckless fun. I remember the first time I convinced you to sing in front of a crowd and I asked him to lend you his guitar. Not only do I remember being your biggest fan in the front row (if you can call it that), but I remember that you touched each other through his guitar and things were never the same for you after that. I remember being so happy for you. After the fourth of July, you’d gone to a party up North and I’d gone to some bonfire in the middle of nowhere and hooked up with the skinny crackhead (though for the record, when I first became attracted to him, I didn’t know he was a crackhead). The morning after you felt so sick you needed me to take your shift for you and I did. And two months later, after a particularly bad night, I needed the same favor, but you were already gone. And I lay alone in our trailer, I felt the space where you once were. We’d already shed all those tears when we said goodbye, feeling like we were letting go of something that was already sewn on.
But speaking of the fourth of July, I remember the way the sky looked in the dark, somewhere in the Grand Tetons. I’d never seen so many shooting stars and in the morning when I woke up in the car I was surrounded by so many wild flowers, it looked like a painting. The mountains were bathed in purple and pink as the sun rose and I was tired and sadly disappointed that the skinny crackhead turned out to be such a bad kisser. But more than that, I’d never felt so free in my life (despite the fact that I’d lost my fleece jacket and hat and wool gloves). Remember that one time, we played hooky and drove south to get ice cream? We rolled down the windows and let the warm air transport us there. Remember sitting in that fountain in downtown Boise? Remember double limes? Remember waking up in my ex-boyfriend’s grandparents house and “Moons Over My Hammy”? I remember all these things. Do you? As I write this, I feel like I am writing to an old lover, but instead, I loved you like a sister.
