Route of a Distracted Memory

Gold, curled rings lay in the rubber collar of the gas tank. My chewed finger flies dangerously near the yellow jacket, motionless and crunchy.

You stung me in August,
Just outside of Covent Garden.
You can’t sting me
Now
You are evaporating with the fumes
These fumes, they push us toward the saturated orange orb, hanging at the end of highway ten.
“No one calls it highway ten,” he said.

We kept driving and at the exit, he leaned over and pushed his lips against my cheek. His kiss was…

December in my childhood home, the gray house nestled in the White Mountains. His kiss was…

the fireplace, on those nights when we ate mom’s annual lasagna, and watched the lights that clung to the awkward arms of the thirteen-foot tree.

So now, I’m writing this at my mindless mall job, shifting my weight around, crossing and uncrossing my legs, trying to keep my feet awake. Every time I start to — I have to stop and answer “the food court? It’s around the corner, on your right” — and the thoughts wash away like musings drawn in the sand. But I’m not sorry, because this becomes the only writing I’ve ever been paid for. Paid by the hour to write and smile at people whose names I don’t know,
Whose lives are silver shadows floating behind them, that disappear when I look too hard.

I am staring at you.
You turn the corners of your mouth
Slightly up, and move your feet at that same pace,
The shuffle of Sunday indecision.

Anyway,
I used to lie under the tree
Under its warm and winking gold lights,
That’s what his lips felt like.