Sunshine of the Spotless

"This is it Joel...it's gonna be gone soon."

"I know..." The words spill out of my mouth, I want to say I don't know what I'm saying. All my life, I've been the fumbling kid who daydreams in the books and talks only when necessary, a titch too loud, and with just enough silence to cover that he doesn't know what he's doing. Holding on to moments, that may or may not have been. As though what could've been and my memory have mixed themselves up.

"What are we gonna do?" She looks at me, she watches me. There's something different in the way she see's me, something idealized, and I know distinctly that this isn't really her, it's what I want her to be. But that's not really true. She's everything.

"Enjoy it, and say goodbye." We run...along the side of the beach. Moments I remember, fading slowly, drifting away like ashes on the wind. We relive these memories, until...

"What if you stayed?" Her voice drifts out through the house. It calls me back, and I don't remember it.

"How? I'm already out the door?" I want her to be rational, in the midst of nothing making sense, and I realize how foolish I have to sound at this moment.

"Can you come back? Can we have a good-bye at least? Let's pretend we had one." She appears at the top of the stairs, warm eyes behind a sheen of tears. I want to hold on...I want to clutch the moments tight in my fingers, and never let them go. I want a lot of things, a lot more things than I or anyone should deserve. She walks down the stairs. Across the memories falling like broken glass and takes my fingers in her warm touch. "Bye Joel."

"I...love you." And it's gone, all I see are flickering lights, tearing past a glittering night car-ride. I want to hold on to the memory, I want it to stay in my head, burn it forever into my brain, a moment, a second, even a hesitation and it's gone. And it disappears, and I can't even pull her name up. Can't even remember if I loved her or not, or who she is. Moments lost.

The blur becomes a pain in my heart, a wrenching without knowing why.

"I saw you talking to someone pretty!"

Was I?

"Yeah man, who was that?"

She was. "She was..." She was. I don't. Know. "...just a girl."

And it's gone.