💾 Archived View for tilde.pink › ~slink › Writing › memories.gmi captured on 2023-04-26 at 14:05:42. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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You are falling. You have always been fallng, and you have never known anything else. You will stop eventually, but when you do it will be a second too late. You
have always been late. He doesn't judge you for it. You have things to do, he understands. And when you are on time, he will be there. He has always been there,
waiting in the alley past the corner store, by the green metal door, with the numbers painted over each other rendering neither set readable. He will smile, and
invite you in, and you will not refuse. The coffee is cold through years of failed obligations and dreams, but he has saved you a cup. It is not poisened, but by
the voice in your head telling you to fly away. The armchair is soft, and he has let you sit in it, and you are shackled by you unwillingness to leave the warmth of
the metal grate covering the gas heater on your left. It is warm and casts a benevolent light upon the oval coffee table he sits across from. He does not question
your whereabouts, and refuses to have you apologise for being late. It was just a bit of waiting, after all. You talk of your life, but only the bits that you can't
remember. He will reply and nod, and you will feel at ease. He will ask you to come again. You do. He listens to you describe your childhood, how the light of the
streetlight shined upon the pavement far away, the sound your fingers made upon the grille of the fan you no longer have. He will smile, and you will come again the
next day. You tell him of the sky, the faraway light that would turn on, turn red, and die. You will go home. You are not late when you return the next night. You
tell him of your home, the apartment on the corner that never seemed to have a parking spot, though you didn't have a car, so you didn't mind. He didn't mind
either. You sip the warm coffee and tell him of the corner store that closed years ago, how the owner fed his family but could never feed himself. How he painted
over the address to somehow avoid paying taxes, and how it worked for about 17 days before he was found, and sent away. You describe the door in the alley, near the
rusted fire escape that was missing a step. You tell of the man who gave you coffee. You laugh, you haven't had coffee in year, but you remember the taste. You tell
him of the building, and its old gas heater, and the voice in your head that went silent earlier than you can remember. You don't know what it spoke of. You tell of
the armchair that was comfortable. You walk outside, through the doorway that never had a door. You walk to a corner that feels familiar. There is nothing but the
street, and the hills, beneath the sky that isn't there. And then you are falling. And you will keep falling. You have always been falling, you have never known
anything else. And you will stop eventually, but when you do, it will be a second too late.