Today is sunny. We drink coffee and laugh, and the laughter stays in my memory. I have a lot of memories. I have a good memory; I remember faces and details well. I play them in my head. Sounds, laughter, everything. I remember what people wear and if they have worn them before. It makes me happy, the act of remembering.
But remembering comes with nostalgia since you are so absorbed by the memories. They haunt you in a way, if you remember too much. I am so nostalgic, almost always. I remember, for example, the perfume my cousin Sasha’s mother used to wear, and if I smell it now, it’ll remind me of the two of them, how me and Sasha were best friends and how we always seemed to be together.
It’s worse, remembering how once your house was full of faces, people, and they no longer have a presence. And even worse when you see them again, and they no longer fit that memory. They’ve changed. You’ve changed. And it’s just not the same. It’s worse when these are people who are part of you, by blood. You know, like brothers, fathers, grandmothers. It’s worse when you remember how they hug you so lovingly, so deliberately, so well that it hurts, it really hurts the memory of their touch.
But it’s not so bad. You’ll die with so many good memories, so many details in your head. The smells, the way they wanted their coffee, the way they talked and asked you how you were, how your silence worried them, made them ask, “something is wrong, tell me, what is it?”
So we finished our coffees and I looked out, to the New York that was once just another place I wanted to conquer. I felt nostalgic, because our coffees finished, because we got up and got in the car and then they drove away, because it wasn’t yesterday anymore, because I was alone again with everything I ever wanted.