I don’t remember her skin. Not all of it, not every centimeter. That lack of memory haunts and frustrates me. I have to make do with what memory allows. I remember the corner of her eyes, and the soft curve of the small of her back. I remember the mountain sun between hearlobe and neck. And a drop of salty water, and sweat, morosely sliding along her arm after diving. I know that better than me, my fingers remember her skin, know the tremble of the first contact, that trembling that nobody can say to whom it belongs. Are the fingers trembling? or is the skin underneath? We can’t tell, but my fingers remember.
I know that we argued and later, our skin together again, I smelled the acrid anger, and the sadness of being angry. Gone but still there, a whiff that was a scar. It could very well be that our body handle emotions slower than our mind, as much as it can be that the memory of the body is deeper than the memories in our head. I know that later in the day I could still kiss the back of her elbow and find the redolence of our morning love, of a night encounter, of falling sleep together and waking up together. I know then that her skin and her smell knows better that her, and than myself.
There is a photo that haunts me. I forget it now and then, but it comes back without warning, without preparing me. The photo is of my friend D., my gone friend. Once we almost falled in love, or we falled in love, and I was scared, and she was angry at my fear. So she disappeared from my life for a decade or more. And as fast as she was gone, she was back, in the time that a text message takes to arrive. I think I fall in love all over again, and she might have been scared, or angry or confused. Or all of it, or none of it. I will not know because she is gone again, perhaps for good. The photo is from before all this, in a park that we both loved. I remember the moment I took it. She looked at the camera, and she was sad, and she was at peace. I clicked just before she smiled, I think. I know the smile that followed, the smile that is not in the photo. My eyes know her and her smile, know the curve of her neck, and the locks of her hair. I know her sad eyes, and her beautiful hands, folded under her chin. My eyes remember how they love to see her, and today, today they only have an old print. But my eyes remember her, better than my memory does.
And today, a last day of any october, I still remember the pain, the pain that is everywhere and nowhere in my body. A pain that started the evening of a 12 of october in 1990, when V. did fall down that mountain and was never seen alive again. When the rest of us did run all over the place and didn’t find her until the morning, when all of us hurt, and in some ways, we never stopped hurting. I never did, anyway. So it is october, and without remembering I remember, and I hurt.