[River had taken memory and put it in her pocket for days when she felt brain-buzzed and flat-tired and empty. Though she'd never legally driven a day in her life, she thought it must have been what it felt like to move in slow waves against the flow of that heavy Jackson Square traffic. With all of its horns and pedestrians who walk in the thick lines and block up the flow like plaque and blood through arteries.
It had been seven whole days since her brain had felt full and empty all the same, and she knew that another trance-like day was to come. Knew that her bottled up memories were losing their potency, even when they had been sitting in barrels for decades or eons or however long her soul had been alive.
She remembers laying out in corn fields and watching the sky pass over her like a friend who waves hello but is in very much of a hurry. She waves back some days, like she may have been in a hurry too, wanting to make up for lost time.
She remembers right now -- laying on her own bed with the ceiling playing the role of sky and clouds and coulds and woulds -- Lake, and his head on her belly with warm cheeks that she feels radiating through the thin cloth on her torso. She misses him -- has missed him since and probably forever will, when he is gone. When her friend -- her person, has made his way onward and she is still here.
It happens. And she closes her eyes, and blinks, and breathes, and she has moved on. Is never over it, but has moved on. Many times before.
But for now -- she is here. And Lake is sprawled out on her bed, on her belly, listening to the way her stomach moves on its inside like maybe he might know her better for the way her organs sing.
River is a smile, and she stares up at the ceiling. And she sends to him:]
Guess what number I’m thinking. [They should be working. It’s what they had set out to do. And yet.]
