Passing by the theater, I had the
strange sensation we were haunting it already; the ghosts of our
memories—phantoms of the children we had been. How many precious summer days
were lived and lost upon these streets, beside these shores, within the brick and
mortar structures ever housing all the days we’ve left behind? So
countless—never gone—ever replaced. Rites of passage through uncertain,
yielding doors. Don’t look back, just move ahead. Cross the bridge into another
world, or maybe just another you.
That summer job—you were an usher and
you’d sneak us in the side door. I don’t remember any movies, but the image of
you grinning with such mischief in your eyes; that’s what seemed important. That’s
how memories are made.
Years later we played basketball
together at the park near Nana’s house. We tried our hand at tennis, too, and
found that we were equally bad at both.
And there were days without you when I
wandered on the beach. Days that bloomed and wilted while I watched the drops
of water, tender as tears, make their way across my skin. While the tide surged
to and fro, finally taking with it all the things we never thought we’d miss,
but now we wonder where they could have gone.
When I visit here, I find I later
dream, in faded color schemes so vivid from the shadows they replace,
reminiscent as the sinking sun and soft as angels’ wings. And it’s almost like
I’m there again, waiting just outside, knowing soon you’ll open up the door. So
I wonder if it may not be that in some other future day and time, these memory
ghosts who come to visit me are the parts of us already long since gone. Haunting
those old places, those old streets…wandering alone beside the shore.
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