Ever since i got out of the hospital a month ago, i haven't known what to do with my time. In the beginning I wandered the streets around my apartment for hours, only going back when i was tired enough to sleep or hungry enough to eat. I never go to any restaurants or shops, places that a lot of people go. Mostly because people recognize me, but i don't even recognize myself.
I guess i was a writer before the accident. Several books bear my name across their covers, but i have no memory of putting the words on those pages. I have no memory of the worlds i have created. I read one, it was if I hadn't seen a word of it in my life. I feel like it's all on a silver screen and I'm sitting in an empty theater watching it all with a bowl of overpriced, soggy popcorn on my lap. But I'm not in a theater, I'm in the real world, cold and alone. Without so much as a memory to warm my heart.
Recently I have found myself coming to a small park in the middle of town nearly every day. There is a bench almost directly in the center. It sits off to the side of a pebbly grey, concrete path that winds from the gate, past the playground and picnic tables, around the pond and back to the gate. Now, there's absolutely nothing comfortable about this bench. It's made of the same concrete the path is made of and sits at such an angle that you're forced to lean forward with your elbows on your knees. The only reason i sit here is a memory. The only one i have.
Every day, sometime around 5:30 a woman sits upon a bench on the other side of the path, just down the way a little. She's only just close enough that i can see her face. Perfectly smooth, sharp chin and cheekbones, pink cheeks, big, piercing, green eyes, a spattering of freckles across her sharp little nose and soft pink lips all framed in a cascading wave of strawberry blonde hair. Her hair lays in soft waves all the way to her hips. She's beautiful in every way, but that's not why i sit here. I sit here because I remember her.
I remember her in a long white dress, flowers woven into a crown circling her hair and placed delicately over a thin veil covering her face. I remember people, all watching us, and tears running down her cheeks even though she was smiling, and laughing and kissing me and dancing in bare feet. It's a beautiful memory, if it truly is a memory and not a dream.
Every day in this park she sits on her bench and cries. She always has a painting she works on. I don't know if it's always the same one or if it changes. I've never seen it. I only see her caressing it with a variety of brushes and paints. Spreading the notes from her mind into colors upon the canvas.
I finally break and can't take it. As she sits on her bench i find myself standing up. She glances at me but then her focus moves back to her painting. My legs carry me over to her, and i sit down without so much as contemplating the action. The delicate smell of her strawberry perfume pulls me deeper into the crazy notion that i know her. She slowly raises her head from her work and her eyes flash in recognition. She opens her mouth to say something, tears flowing openly down her face. I beat her to the words,
" Hi." I breathe out, it's the first word I've said to another person in a month. "I'm sorry, but is there any chance you know me?"
She looks at me with wide eyes and throws her arms around me, sobbing loudly into my chest. I don't know what to do but my arms hold her tightly to me. She's the only tether i have to reality and i feel as if it is closer than it has ever been, and about to slip from my fingers at the same time.
She cries "I thought you were gone! I thought you were dead! I didn't know! I didn't know! I thought you were gone!" I can feel her tears soaking through my shirt
I look down at her painting and finally see the image. Its me, dressed in a suit, standing next to her in her white dress. The scene is in this park just beside the pond where the flowers are and there are butterflies dancing around the scene. My heart stops and i feel it shatter into a hundred pieces. Words tumble from my mouth before i can stop them
"I did know you, I know your face, i know you!"
She pulls her face back, her eyes glistening and her face contorted in pain. "I'm your wife"
The world spins around me and I watch tears pour down her cheeks. I can feel them do the same down my own.
"I don't remember anything else i only remember you, what happened? Who am I? What's your name?" I scream in my mind but not a word leaves my lips, my throat is choked with a sob and my body is choked with her presence. We stay, wrapped in each others arms for a minute. The sky opens and pours out onto us, just as our souls pour down our cheeks. She pulls back a little bit. Her hair stuck to her face and her clothes clinging to her body.
"We were married in June. Right here in this park" She picks her painting up from the ground and shows it to me. Now it has mud smeared across the scene and I can see that this upsets her. She tries to rub it away with her sleeve but she only smears the butterflies into blurs against the grass and grinds the mud into her once ivory dress. She shakes with emotion and drops it back on the ground.
"It was our honeymoon and you disappeared one night. I thought you had second thoughts and you ran off with someone else.." she trailed off and her eyes burned holes in mine with every bit of pain she'd had over the last several months. Suddenly it was like she had burned a hole through a wall in my head and my memories flooded back to me. I remembered meeting her, I remembered the wedding in perfect detail and I remembered everything in between. I remembered my childhood, my friends, my family, I remembered her name i remembered my books and their inspirations and beginning and endings. I remembered the accident. Suddenly I had it all back and it was all clinging to a girl, who was wrapped in my arms. I finally had the words to bring my life back, i had the words to give to the strawberry girl in my arms to fix everything.
