Fugue #120

Our memories aren’t picture accurate.

Remember the pond that night. Think about it, really, for a whole minute. Now: How would you describe it?

Flat.

Both two-dimensional and dull. The reeds are lines on an orange page, a great disorderly tangle of lines - long and short, some straight and some bent, some thick and some thin, strong and weak, fine...is that enough? They don’t mean anything to us anymore. We used to see shapes, symbols, messages out there - we did that night, certainly - but now we don’t, we can’t. And we won’t even look.

It’s not as warm as that night. The sweat doesn’t glow off our faces, necks, chests in the day’s last light. A sweatshirt, not a swimsuit, a pair of jeans, not cutoffs. Boots, not sandals. We sit in the sand. It’s damp from today’s rain, and cool.

We talk, and our lines are interchangeable:

- It’s getting dark.
- Yeah, earlier.
- What time do you have to be home?
- Like an hour.