Words about Ay
“You know what the weirdest part of life is?” She is chewing on the cap of a pen.
“What?”
“Anniversaries.”
My coffee is getting cold but the microwave is broken. “Why?”
“Like,” She stops to think. The cap of her pen finds the table. Fingers find a napkin. Always fidgeting with something. “Anniversaries of someone’s death, or anniversaries of love beginning, or anniversaries of horrible events that transpired. They are weird because it’s almost as though no matter how hard you try, these things will never go away. Even if you really want them to.”
She is sensitive and I can’t tell if she is getting ready to cry or not. The napkin begins to tear down the middle and her eyes get lost in focus, remembering or forgetting all of the faces she’s seen or voices she’s heard. “Every year you will remember and every year you will forget, simultaneously. It’s like the anniversary has a hold on you.”
Her eyes find mine and I know she wants me to say something, but my lungs are dust and my coffee is still cold. Pain has her by the pinkie. It’s telling her to remember, remember, but I know her heart still hurts and I don’t know how to make it go away.
I tell her to close her eyes so I can erase the wrinkles. Erase the memories they hold. Heating her skin with my fingertips and my lips. But I can’t kiss hard enough or scrape my fingernails deep enough. The anniversaries are always there, just below the skin. And I don’t want to press all of the wrinkles away. I’m afraid she’ll forget and then I’ll forget, and we will be nameless. Floating along like rafts in a pool, too murky to see the bottom, waiting for unknown things to grab our ankles and crush the air from our lungs.
