All of that city held the taste of sand for years – of sunscreen, of plastic. Back when nights meant something, I lived through entire years where I couldn’t drive past it without crying. But this was later, and there was a little consolation in being able, whatever the time, to tell myself that it had gone well, in the end. In the later years, after we moved, if I found myself on that road I would turn towards the inland, away from the shore. I had found out that some things are better left unturned, unrevisited. As I aged, the sadness of my twenty-five years took its residence in that city, then the anger of twenty-six years old me who didn’t find you, the confusion of my twenty-seven and twenty-eight, before I said yes. All of the jealousy, all of my fondness, the fear of showing it. But also your first absence, then your repetitions, that pride of yours that kept us apart for years. None of my friends believed in the revelation and we kept living our lives as if Dora hadn’t spoken. I kept coming back to that city, walking along streets brimming with fourteen years old experiencing the first summer of their lives and the world that was promised to them. Forever out of place amongst them, my eyes grew darker as my friends moved into other cities, where living was easier, analog was becoming a psychological necessity and growing up with children felt safer. I didn’t understand why they felt this need to protect them by isolation until you began inviting me to the outings of your brigade and I began seeing what nightmare you called future. This was after, too.
