Say You'll Remember Me

by Abby Jimenez

“Because when I showed how I felt, that’s how they knew how to hurt me.”

My heart was pounding. “Why?” I asked again. He was quiet on the other end. “Because I need to be in the same room as you,” he said. “Preferably one with a door that unlocks.”

The gnawing discontent of the last two months was finally quiet, and all I could think in this moment of relief was that I was kissing my wife.

“I think we grow up and we either get harder or we get softer on our parents. We realize how fucked up they actually were or we give them a pass because adulting is hard and now we get it. They’re people and they make mistakes.”

“Because if you were my wife you would be my world. Everything starts with you and ends with you. Anything else is just the stuff that happens in the middle.”

You think that it’s the big memories you should be chasing—and it is in a way. Birthdays and vacations and special occasions. But the small memories are the fabric of your life, the ones so inconsequential that you don’t even remember them. You just remember how you felt when you were making them.

“I know. I’ve always loved you,” he said simply. “I think I couldn’t forget you because I remember you from a different lifetime. And I loved you then too.”

Maybe that’s the last thing we forget. Or we never forget it at all. Not really. We lose the words to say it. We lose the ability to show it. But we never lose the ability to feel it or recognize it when we see it. Love is the brightest color in a gray world.