Winter

      I keep thinking about last winter, and missing those elements. Watching Rocky Horror and Pulp Fiction in Jenni’s room with too many people piled onto one tiny couch. Smoking a cigarette with Derek, even though I didn’t really mean to. Actually using my own two feet to get somewhere, even if it was only to a drugstore to buy more candy than we should have. Driving on roads at night with no one else around, music off, chilly because Derek rolled a window down to smoke. The smell of cigarette smoke that can only ever hope to remind me of good things, no matter how awful it may be, because of all of the wonderful memories and associations tinged with the smell. Envy on the Coast, which is so full of associations to wintertime that I can’t possibly listen to it during the summer. The Used, which I can’t listen to in anything but a gold Honda Accord that smells like vanilla. Derek’s hand always in mine, and the hilarity of two skinny people with no real body heat trying to warm each other up. Being told by a complete stranger that we were the most beautiful couple ever, and that we should never  ever break up (and not really bothering to tell them that we weren't a couple).

If only mental images could be framed.