Innocent Times

I have never described certain memories to anyone; sometimes I’m uncertain they are mine. It seems too pretentious for an adolescent to put Romeo and Juliet in my backpack, grab a handful of chocolate beans in case I have to fend off some attack of weariness, and set off looking for lightning. I don’t have many coffee shops to choose from; it’s either Starbucks and the hustle that protects it, or the absurd cafe where nothing moves in the light, and everything is beautiful and inconvenient to those who don’t know the truth. I may not even have known the taste of espresso yet. I ask for one anyway, picture-perfect, unaware that I don’t know everything, and the day is full of cocoons. A few more years have to pass before I understand the miracle of metamorphosis, and that it should be performed privately, so many romances that never fly me anywhere, how I always manage to be in public when the urge for vomit and truthfulness hits me, and like an omen, how I only know whether to open my mouth or to keep it shut when I’m in privacy.

“Here, these are for you, Claire, to help you like me faster.”

“There’s a crooked couch we can sit on and face each other.”

It’s an isolated letter S on the white page of the floor. It’s also a love letter in its first minutes when we look and wave at each other, ready for anything and everything, anxious waiting, hearts pounding, playing at the slightest contact, a foot, a shirt sleeve, methodical and accidental. Everyone is looking at us like they want to say something, but remain silent, the only words escaping my pockets are exaggerated and inept with distressing frequency, it’s odd that only then did I ever think of the seamstress, and I’m trying so hard not break things, I can’t get to the bathroom fast enough, what a relief it is when I shut the door!

To return to the cafe, that small oasis in our unbridgeable chasms. And the memories I can’t shake!

I try in vain to forget your face but can’t stop punching myself downwards in reminiscences that won’t end, I imagine, like clouds filled with cold streets and waking school children picking up chocolate beans off the pavement. I’ve repaired my wardrobe so many times.