"There's a moment I still keep with me. It's fragile and delicate. It's close to twenty years old now and still doesn't drive, but that's perfectly fine with me. I don't know how much of the moment is a memory or how much has been filled in and switched out over the years. For example, I can still feel the shingles under our hands and the warmth upon them radiating into us from where we sat."
"I remember trying to lean in to each other to take a picture of the sun for some reason. We didn't say much. We didn't know how to say it. We still don't. We've tried. At times I get frustrated that the moment wasn't anything more, like if we said or did something different, a whole different collection of decades would have occurred."
A person preserves a fragile rooftop memory from nearly twenty years ago. That moment feels vivid through physical sensations like shingles and warmth. Attempts to capture the sun in a photograph and the inability to express feelings are remembered. Regret surfaces about what the moment did not become, alongside gratitude for what it contained. They have been dwelling on what could have been and recognize it is time to let go. They acknowledge that people change and that mutual intimacy has faded. They offer love, apology for the pain caused, gratitude for shared decades, and a farewell.
Read at Portland Mercury
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