Do You Remember Passion?

“Do You Remember Passion?”

by alex rivas

Pushing open the door of the café on Gray Street, I really don’t know why I’ve come here; well I mean, I do know why but it’s easier to contemplate the rafters. They’re familiar, you know, but not too much - I can throw my head back in that corner chair in the far end of the room and get lost in the veins, the bumps and bruises of the wood.

I ordered another King Crimson tea this time, but honestly I don’t know if I can finish it – not because it tastes funny or anything, it’s just harder to drink it all without someone else borrowing the cup once in a while. So I’ll just leave it there I guess.

Took a look around, it makes me kinda sad – seems they’ve closed off our – I mean, the patio. I think it’s probably because the bench back there finally gave out, I guess Formica really isn’t as unbreakable as some people think – really you shouldn’t take that sort of thing for granted. And past that patio, I don’t even need to look outside to see, to remember everything that’s there – things that don’t change, or go away, that are truly concrete. There everything remains, stays still while the world panics through it.

On the wall there, “Do You Remember Passion?” – the favourite graffiti of the kids who haunt those backalleys, some other person begs the question.

do you remember,

do you remember?

I remember, that stain living right on the bricks, I took one of your senior pictures there, the words that just jump out to say – well, I don’t know what right they have to ask, anyway.

It’s not something that needs prompting, the thoughts that were already in my head. I could count the cracks in the sidewalk from where I am to that wall from memory, feeling two sets of footsteps in my mind but I can only see my own two feet, placing themselves one after the other; stumbling and remembering how you always said I was clumsy but honestly it was just hard to walk with someone’s hand around your waist pulling you this way and that. It’s not any easier, though,

walking alone.

27 cracks – that’s how many there are between the parking lot and here, our no my favourite little streetway – I guess it’s a short walk, and I get so distracted anyway.

I check to see nobody’s looking, as usual – for different reasons I guess but I mean I’m glad all the same that no one’s around. I trace the broken lines on the wall there lightly - as lightly as I might trace the lines on someone’s face.

It’s funny, I can see everything, right there – the memories, the photographs I took superimposed just the same on the chipping whitewash. Also funny, because the wall behind that whitewash wasn’t even white to begin with – it’s – too easy to see so much.

Also funny; you know, people stare just as much at one person wandering around alone as two?

But it’s still so very

different. Oh, and there –

somebody took your place in the parking lot.