fading memories || Ashton Irwin

The meeting

I kick my feet along the leaf covered ground beneath the sad swing set I'm sitting on. After my 19 years of living in this shit hole I have never once seen an actual child sit here, an eerie metal monster hiding behind a row of trees. I remember countless nights spent here as a young teenager, that first drop of alcohol entering my body, the first puff of an intoxicating cigarette, countless angry words scrambled onto paper. All these memories that i have tried so hard to erase from my mind were created in this hell hole, but for some reason i keep coming back to it.

I close the leather bound black book and run my hands over the torn and frayed cover. I've had this book since I was 14 and it contains all of my thoughts, mostly written in stupid poems. Lately, after what happened to him I haven't been able to find the inspiration to write, instead I just stare at my tears as they stain the bleach white paper.  He was my everything, my beginning and end and everything in the middle, I know it seems cliché, some stupid teenagers in love. But that is exactly this story, so if you don't like this kind of story I suggest you stop reading.

I don't remember much about the day I met him, I remember colours, blurred outlines of pictures but never clear images. That's just the way my brain has always worked,  memories that evoke feelings of joy are never to be seen, but the ones that leave me in tears remain, clear as day and highlighted so no matter how hard i try i can't forget them.

 Anyway, back to the colours. Shades of blue reflected gentle glimmers of orange and pink from the fading sunset, sand surrounded my feet as sea salt flowed through my hair. He was surfing, or swimming, the details are foggy, all I remember is he was getting out of the water, it dripped from his hair in perfect droplets.

"Could you pass me my towel?" the first words I heard from his lips, I threw him what I could only assume was his towel. He smiled and used it to cup his face and dry his curly hair. That's something I loved about him, the way his hair bounced off his head in perfect messy curls, in a way that framed his features.

He then sat with me, and we talked for what felt like hours, we had no real direction to our conversation, they never did. He told me about his home life, i found out his name was Ashton and he was 19. We talked about his cheating ex he had just broken up with, even when he was talking about something that sad, he always found a way to make it humours, that's something I always admired about him, he was always to light hearted about everything. It was almost like he didn't have a sad bone in his body.  We talked about our shared love for the beauty of nature, how he always wanted to be in it and how I love writing about it. I told him about my poetry when he asked about the book I was holding, he asked to read it but I refused. Then with a little giggle he scribbled his number onto my arm and told me to call him, maybe even write about him someday.

When I got home I did. I wrote about the swirling colours and the silver water gently rippling and reflecting them, I wrote about the giggly brown haired boy and how his face made light shine in the darkest parts of my brain. I wrote about how for once in my life, I felt normal.