I guess it's a new year, though not a new me, though I do find myself on the other side of the world, aaaaagain.

These memories are collected like loose change, like scraps and threads of cloth, buttons and odd ends. Each jangles around in limbo between past and present, their collective cacophony the low hum behind each story told, each personal fable whispered and later exaggerated. I remember, I remember, I remember.

I remember, for the hundredth time, that particular sunset. Though I have seen hundreds before, this one was new because it wasn’t my eyes that saw it for the first time. And as yellow faded to orange to that too-loud pink strung with gold, the froth of angry Pacific waves reflecting the fade into deepest mauve and eventual dark…as the sky rioted above, knees inched closer and fingertips crept across the sand to find each other. Sand got into my ears and my pockets, in between my toes, the web of skin between thumb and index. And these colors, I remember those colors, that lasted forever but what was really only half an hour, and all we could find to talk about was the cielito lindo.

I remember, I’ll try never to forget, how we played like children in the street, laughter overflowing into the too-quiet neighborhood, through pools of streetlights. And how at my gate, neither of us really wanted to say goodbye and have that very first sunset end, so I worked up my courage and asked through a smile…
……remember what I said?.....
…and how you said yes, and things were never quite the same after that. Perhaps later you thought that you should have turned your head away, should have walked back down the street and kept that night just for the memory of color.
But what I didn’t tell you, but I remember like it was yesterday, how after you left and I went upstairs, through-the-gate-up-the-stairs-in-the-door, how little grains of sand found their way deep inside something I couldn’t quite describe, how it turned orange and too-loud pink strung with gold just like that sunset.

Remember, don’t you, how many other afternoons there were, but how that one was almost, casi casi perfect. How I cried too much, sometimes not enough, and we danced like no one was there, ate what we found to be best from our own hands, going to sleep embraced by the sound of the ocean. And so many times after that, always laughing like children or just perhaps fingertips touching, that was enough, right?

I still collect these memories, I string them along quietly because I think only you really understand, you who hold the other half of all those afternoons. You remember, oh yes, tell me that you remember, too.