A Town Named After A Girl I Once Knew

A Town Named After a Girl I Once Knew




   Lying on my bedroom floor, waiting for the morning to come or the night to end, whichever comes first. So many things have been written about the beauty of night skies that I feel it futile to say anymore, but a simple glance to my window tells me otherwise. There are no stars in my metropolitan sky, only memories of stars, from different places and different times, different lifetimes. Constellations and dazzling formations that appear so close that they can almost be placed in the palm of your hand and stroked like a cute little animal. They twinkle in that abyss of darkness and while I watched they seemed so vulnerable, and that the only response to anything would be to keep shining away, up alone in a black sky. Maybe the world is like the universe and all of us are like stars, or maybe I haven’t slept enough and that’s the sleep depravity talking.
   My window opens and the coldness of nearby winter invades the room without mercy. Preferring escape to captivity, I pull myself up and grab my jacket off the bed. A few uneventful minutes take me outdoors and beneath a wrathful blizzard, the warning of which I had forgotten in my nightlong daze of half-sleeps. Streets, cars, buildings have all been painted white by this palette of the seasons. The emotionally sterile concrete buildings appear even more colourless than ever before, and as they flawlessly blend with everything around them I can no longer tell anything apart. Snow on the ground lights up the sidewalk beneath my feet, and I cannot help but believe the illusion that this new snow filled world will be a brighter place than ever before. Once again, the sleep depravity may be playing games with my mind.    

Caramel Memory

   I can't stand that moment when as you're about to step outside, you can't shake the feeling that you've forgotten something. Something important.
   This happens to me all the time, I'm a very forgetful person. One time my buddies rented out a huge arena out in Bracebridge so we could play shinny for the day. We were driving in the car, halfway there when I realized I'd forgot my skates. Another time it was my mom's birthday, the big six-zero. My gift was this incredibly high quality caramel fudge I ordered shipped in from Belgium. At least, it would've been my gift if I hadn't left it on the kitchen counter. Snarky, my German Sheppard, sure enjoyed it instead.
   In each of those instances and many others, I've experienced the moment I mentioned earlier. Standing at the door, eying the room slowly and carefully in hope that this "thing" will leap out and save my memory from humiliation. It never happens, of course, and sure enough I arrive at my big final exam in time to realize I didn't bring anything to write with. Have you ever written an exam with a broken yellow crayon you found in a men's public bathroom? I don't recommend it.
   Those closest to me express mostly ridicule and frustration at my condition. I've heard: 'Jack, just keep everything in one place.' or 'I'm not your mom, Jack. Look after your things!' and 'Old Man Jack does it again! Senile at the age of twenty-nine!' None of this helps or motivates me to improve, none of it can. I make lists, put everything I need in a bag the night before, every precaution. Yet every time I'm in the moment again: standing at the door, looking around, knowing I'm forgetting one thing that insists on hiding in a shroud of mystery. It's a level of hell I live over and over, for if you do not remember a thing in a moment, does it truly exist there? Forgotten things that reappear are like raindrops in a sudden storm: what was not here before is now here and was always here.
   Out the door I go, quickly drenched because despite the rain through the window I forget my umbrella. My mind has never been the same since my head bounced off the boards that day.