Autobiographical Memories

We were at the temple and the flame was brought round. My parents had told me it was god. I was supposed to touch it then raise my fingers to my forehead. I held my hands there deeper and longer there than was sensible and brought them away streaked with sooty shadows.

It didn’t hurt, but it shocked my mother. Perhaps I did it because I was bored by that place and the rituals that barely meant anything to me. I can’t recall. But if I did believe it was god, how could I choose other than to burn myself?

I wasn’t part of a scene when I was younger. I just listened to whatever music they pumped into the stores that I wasted my time in, as I endlessly browsed the shelves I already knew the contents of. Most of the music was as vacuous as the wasted time, but occasionally I’d hear something that made me feel less disconnected, something I’d carry with me for weeks, waiting and aching for the next time I’d hear it. I used to think love was like that; that it would float into my life as simply, as unexpectedly, as unasked for.

It was before dawn, the darkest hour according to the saying, when the coach pulled up. I wasn’t exactly awake just there with my luggage.

I took a seat by a window and leaned against it. I couldn’t sleep with all the shaking, so I watched, trying to make something of the images sliding past: the black shapes of trees, the blur of white road markings, the clouds that formed vague and enigmatic symbols like an overly abstruse and convoluted simile.

A nameless stop somewhere:
the silhouettes of a couple merge,
she raises her hand to his face,
they part.