For sale: One Glass Bottle, Memory Included

The seller claims he doesn’t want it anymore. The memory that is, not the bottle. And not that he has no need of it, but that it makes him cry and he’d rather stop now.

It strikes me as a joke, of course it does. But it’s Sunday and the silence is so silent. And I’m a little drunk.

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It arrives with instructions. Open quickly. Inhale slowly. Sit down.

As I always have, I do what I’m told.

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She’s dancing. No furniture, but there’s music. She insists, always, on music. I know this. I know her.

Bare feet on bare wooden floor and painted toenails, pink like dawn. Labelled boxes as high as she is tall. Kitchen. Glassware - Fragile!!! Towels. Bedroom.

She’s dancing. Beams of white streetlight—curtains still in their neat-labelled box. Dancing, and laughing. And it’s the moment that everything begins.

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I go about my life with the new, old memory. It comes when I need it, when the silence is roaring like the end of the world.

As if it knows.

Knows I will never replace it with one of my own.