Black and blue were the only colors I could see, though i didn't need to see any of them. For once my eyes weren't what was important. It seemed like all my life up until that point, I'd been making my eyes and ears do all the work for me. They did all the feeling. But not tonight. Tonight my sense of touch was the king of all my feelings, with only flashes of everything else. Her hair in front of her face. The sound of breathing. It might have been the greatest moment of my life...this...over and under, finally attaining that which I hated waited so long for...
But then I cut the memory off. I'm snapped forcibly back into reality...back to staring at the open road or the front of a classroom. It's better this way. If I didn't stop myself, I'd have spent forever in that moment that happened so long ago now. It's ancient history, and sealed in a stone coffin deep underground is where this memory belongs.
Why the change? Time. It's been too long since it's happened, first and foremost. I cannot allow myself to be satisfied with the paltry experience I have gained. Life has more to offer. Second, and more shallow, is that the memory was corrupted long ago by the very same person with whom it is concerned. More than that, I hate that I feel that way. This is why it has been too long.
Memories...experiences...people, they can all grow fungus inside the mind. It's happened so many times now that there are names I dare not speak to myself lest they ricochet off every unsuitable cavern in my mind. There are those, rather...one, that I clung to for so long...hers was a dying, decaying tower, slowly rotting from areas invisible and impenetrable to my eye. Finally, I believe, they have reached me, and though I still hang on, I know the time is short. I know that she too may fade.
It's easy to burn something...wait too long on a roasted chicken and it all turns black. Sometimes...a lot of the time, it's a mistake. No one likes burnt or wasted food. That food could have been better used. It could have been delicious...but in the end it simply went too long without attention. Into the trash it goes, taking a very very familiar branch of metaphors instead of a novel one. I'd be damn close to starving were I trying to make myself a meal to survive on.
I never forget words that put you into this fate. I don't forget what you build on your end and I build on mine. I don't forget these things, and I dislike to see them die. I like to look back on things with fondness. Who knew that such a thing had an expiration date?
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