Dramatic Fiction

Marks

          The knife is there. Scent of oil. Cold of metal. I remember.

They all left their mark. The ones you sometimes don’t realize or maybe choose not to. Not until you’re ready. Not until you really need the memories those marks recall.  

I look at the scribbles on the notepad he left. I wonder what could have happened if I’d have chosen differently then. Could he even come back? To write on that pad again, like he used to on rainy days or when he was smiling because he had a new idea.

I don’t know if it would be the same if he did.

The marks they’ve left. Some good. Some not. Each memory a lingering ghost that always finds its way back to my mind, no matter how hard I might try to keep them from it. Hers is next. Perhaps more profound than the others. A faded picture, both in my hand and in my head. It tells me one story. Then another. Just from a glance. And I remember the smell of her hair. Forest and flowers. The way she used to grin when she knew she was being coy. The scar on her hand she never told me about.

Am I ready now? I wonder if I’ll be asking that question for years to come. Wondering if I’ll ever fully understand the significance. Fully understand the impacts they had on me and where my life was taken because of them. One thought was all it took for me to be swept into a new life where so much seemed just within my grasp, and so many untold joys were ready to be mine if I just followed them into the unknown.

One step. Then another. I look back now, through the window we used to stare through together, knowing that with one I walked further. With another, hardly at all. Their marks remain, but it’s the memories that come with them…they make a moment seem an eternity, and memory ensures the length.

Where would I be now without them? And where might I be were I not unfortunate enough to know them? The knife on the dresser holds a different view of each. It doesn’t discriminate, even now as I remember the times I held it. Just like the others, it carries those memories, but the marks here are so much more real, visible in ways the others aren’t. All of them knew what it meant to me. Now I wonder about that, the echoes present every time I contemplate holding it again.

Marks, memories, and echoes. They see me through. They condemn every thought that would allow me to forget them. Maybe now, looking out the window, listening to the rain, knowing the knife is there beside their lingering presence, I realize what they meant. Each road they walked beside me, whether it was because they convinced me to or not. Only marks, memories, and echoes, or so I want to believe. So part of me would have me believe alongside the others that have left the same. I need them, but they need me to remember. To know were it not for them, I wouldn’t be here either.

I could choose to forget. I could choose to make it so they never existed. But they know I won’t. Just like I do. Maybe I can’t. Or won’t. Though at times, it doesn’t matter which. Like today. Rain against the windows, light upon the scribbles. The knife. The room where there’s so much more than four walls, two windows, and a desk. None of it will ever be gone. Not fully.

Neither will they.

Then she’s there, her hand on my shoulder. At least I think she’s there. Sometimes it’s hard to tell. Schrodinger’s ghost, but real enough to me. Real enough to feel the mark and hear the echo, and to know that memory will remain no matter where this road takes us as I choose to follow it beside her.

The smell of the rain…that’s what I already remember now, knowing that the smell will be linked to this time and whatever I else I’ll experience with her. It’ll always be hers. Like the scribbles were his. Like the window was hers. And the marks that I smell and feel will always be mine.

I know the knife is there, but I don’t need it. Not now. Maybe never again. Echoes of another time try to take me back, but the rain keeps me here. Like the marks I need. The ones that mean the most.