You remember it like a watercolour or clouds,
cotton candy or sea foam:
washed out, gentle, sweet.
You ate strawberries and sliced grapes,
cold.
Sometimes you were given a cracker that you didn’t eat,
just held.
And when you were bored with it, you simply let it fall.
Easy.
You remember hushed tones, and climbing.
And laughing, and sometimes crying,
But arms when you needed them.
One day you will be on an airplane
and as the pilot flies you through a mass of clouds,
the plane will shake and you will be surprised
to learn that the feeling of a cloud is not the same
as your memory of how you imagined a cloud.
Not like cotton candy or sea foam.
Maybe the reality is more interesting
but you’re grateful for your memory,
washed out, gentle, sweet.
♦
Teri Vlassopoulos is the author of the short story collection, Bats or Swallows (2010), and a novel, Escape Plans (2015), both with Invisible Publishing. Her fiction has appeared in Room Magazine, Joyland, Little Fiction, and various other North American journals. She is the cookbook columnist for Bookslut, and has had non-fiction published at The Toast, The Millions and the Rumpus. She can be found at http://bibliographic.net or @terki. She lives in Toronto.
♦♦♦
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