Do you remember

There's this thing I do sometimes, where I remember something, and then I ask myself. "Do you remember?"

"Yes I remember." I'll think back.

I only occasionally think this odd.

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Do you remember how you used to kiss the felt face on the inside of the door? For luck. You called the “Door-f” An inside joke that only you knew.

Yes I remember.

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Do you remember that dance, Harry potter themed, where Shine wore red boots? Circus club had been invited to perform, and the electronic music collective was putting it on. I came because Manta was there, and because there was dancing.

But it was dancing in circles with friends, with only me dancing between them. How I danced between them! Eyes always drawn to the red red boots.

I remember.

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One of my favorite places was the fence at the end of the trail. Past the three - tree woods at the edge of the Janet’s farm. It was a fencepost I could sit on and watch the goats. Janet had seven daughters, and although I didn’t really know them, I knew the seventh daughter must be a fairy tale creature.

I thought if I sat there long enough she would come out and we would talk. Never did. Do you remember?

Yes, I remember.

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I invited Shine out to pick nettles with me. Borrowing Manta’s gloves for her while I went at it bare handed as is my custom. She decided to do it the way I did, said the pain was a lot like getting a tattoo.

Do you remember her squatting among the nettles delicately snipping them into the bag? Then we drank tea from my thermos together and talked about gender identity and privilege and nettles and respect. When we left someone had stole the gloves she left by the sidewalk.

I remember.

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Do you remember the only chicken I ever killed?

There was a chicken named Kookaburra who started eating eggs. We stopped letting her in the hen house, and then the rest of the flock, understanding what we were about, shunned her as well.

But she just wouldn’t die.

She survived without our help, and without the rest of the flock for months. I decided on my own that something must be done. I got the hatchet and captured her, and held her upside down over the block where we killed Johnny Cash and swung. It didn’t go through the neck but she was dead all the same. Then - maybe in anger, maybe in guilt - I didn’t want anyone knowing I’d killed her - I flung her body into the woods as hard as I could.

Later Papa told me that when he killed Johnny he had the urge to throw him away.

I remember.

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Do you remember when we went out in the rain after tea and scones. It was sprinkling lightly and we went into the woods in the dark. I fell in love with the way Shine stepped into darkness without hesitation. With the way her face, briefly illuminated by car headlights from the nearby road, concentrated on her ukulele. With the way her voice met and melded with the darkness. With the way her body felt against yours.

I remember.

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I used to have two inner voices. The “Witch” who was bad, and the “Unnamed one.” Who was good. The witch would taunt me, cackle when I failed. One day I burnt the witch with a fireball inside my mind. The unnamed one faded.

Then two more voices arose. Lahunai, a celestial maiden, and Evracatong, my daemon. These two were more respectful. Evracatong wasn’t evil, it was his job to look out for my interests above others, but he touched evil. I would consult them when I needed opposing voices, I would call on them when I did my magic.

One day they told me together, that I didn’t need them anymore. That it was time to go on my own. They were such an omnipresent part of my adolescence, and I haven’t heard from them since.

Yes - I remember.

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Do you remember the day, at the Evergreen beach, when everyone who walked by knew me, and I kept waving. Shine laughed about it, and I told her it was because I’d been on campus for so long.

She taught me to eat the tops of strawberries. Leaves first, then down to their tips. We retired to the woods, to a sunny log I almost fell off of, then a tree by the path and kissed until the sun faded.

She had a way of moving her hips when she kissed, like waves crashing against my pelvis. I felt like the shore, and I learned to move against her, match her rhythm with my own.

I remember.

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I don’t have many memories of my brother. He has far more of me. I remember asking him to make me a burrito and him putting hot sauce on it. I remember calling him blueberry hair when he got his blue mohawk. I remember he and Amy scampering upstairs, bare buts illuminated by our incoming car. His dog attacking my chicken. Him in handcuffs. Him telling me not to get into the stuff he was leaving.

Then he left. I only ever saw him again the one time we visited Grandpa Jim, and he felt like a stranger who pretended to know me intimately.

I remember.

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That day when I was visiting and I met her friends, and watched as they all played and sang together, with a deeper web of emotion spun between them than anything I’ve ever shared. Shine said they’d all been in love with each other at one point or another.

Then we parted and they went off to find a place in the bushes to poop, and that was the night she called me master for the first time as I wrapped her hair in my fists like reigns.

I remember.

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Do you remember that time Libra got mad? I made a joke facebook page, “I love making Libra blush.” with an unflattering picture of her as the cover. She messaged me asking me to take it down and the intensity of it frightened me. As if I were suddenly facing a storm where I had expected a mildly annoyed girl.

Later that day I came to her table. “Forgive me?”

“We’ll see.”

She did in the end.

I remember.

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We were up in our treehouse. The last time we ever went there. Hidden high up, but leaning out over the beach. Shine leaned back, head hanging upside down over the edge, and I slipped a finger into her, and she let me take her there as people walked under.

I remember knowing then that she was serious. That she was mine whenever and wherever I wanted, and it wasn’t the act itself, but the fact that it had happened that caught my breath.

I remember.

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I was going to build a glass house in the woods. Rock maple was getting rid of windows, big ones. I spent a night stealing them and hiding them behind a big stump. I’d marked out the spot the house was to be, but I couldn’t get there in the dark.

They found my windowpanes. Took them away.

But later when I was stranded on campus, with no one to go to and no way to call for help, I made my way to that spot in the dark. I slept curled up there until at four in the morning I made a fire. I curled around the embers and singed my coat. I still notice it sometimes. I call that spot my altar to Pan.

I remember.

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After Shine broke up with me, and entirely by coincidence I went to a workshop on trauma right after, I made my way off the trail back, and deep into the woods. I sat down between two trees and for the first time began to process what I’d lost. That was the first time all the memories came pouring through. Mind blasted open for anything to fall into.

I remember Avril lavigne “She was everything, everything, that I wanted.” “We were meant to be, supposed to be, but we lost it.” lulled endlessly through my lips. I was noticing small things. A vine I wanted to ask my botany teacher about. The trees, one a fir, and one a hemlock on either side. I grabbed rotten stick and hurled them at the trees, without really knowing why, just that it was necessary.

I remember. ****************

I have a box where I keep my most precious memories. Most of them are women. Some of them treasures I’ve picked up along the way. There’s a little gold cage where I keep every compliment I’ve ever loved.

Inside there’s a yellow cloth, soft on one side. I don’t know where it comes from. I don’t know how I got it. The only thing I know is that once I picked it up and thought. “This came from the most beautiful woman in the world.” I keep it because there is a memory I know longer posses that is held in that cloth, and memories are stories, and stories are sacred.

What is your story little yellow cloth?

I don’t remember.