Fiction: Memories

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You press your memories into my hand, word by word, petal by petal, thistle by thistle. 

I close my fist over the years and hold as tightly as I can. 

Are you giving these memories to me? Am I borrowing them? Are they shared? Like shared custody? Like a dog or child, weekends here at my little shack, memories running over tiled floor as spaghetti boils over on the stove, bubbling frothing blackening the range with unattended flour and salt. 

Or at your place, perfectly moped and dusted, blue green seaglass gleaming in bowls and jelly jars. Light skitters across the pumpkin pine floors and comes to a halt at the edge of the memory’s coat. You pick that one up, cradle the thought of me on Pfeiffer Beach close to your collarbone where the skin is so taut and freckled. You squeeze too tightly and the tiny fading memory slips through your fingers and comes back to me to hold it at a distance, too painful for either of us to cradle.

We will go back and forth for years until the memories’ coats are tattered from delivery, until their shoes are not shoes anymore but mere anklets, soles worn away by trudging through time. We don’t see eye to eye on their keep or care and we argue without speaking until the memories decide to emancipate themselves and be rid of both of our selfish heart homes.

They will pack their satchels of secondary memories (you wore a robin blue scarf that day at the beach) and be on their way into the ether. They will not look back. They will not stop. They may circle around someday and come knocking on our doors when we least expect it, but they will be free to come and go as they please.

But for now, nestled in my palm, they coo and rub and warm themselves in my grasp.

I smile up at you as you fade into the evening.

You are now a memory about passing on memories and my arm reaches out into the dust of your skin.