Too Many Things

Sitting on a park bench.  A faded memory materializes.  A ghost out of hiding.
      
White tennies to match her buttoned shirt.  Blue skirt to match the ribbon in her golden hair.  She is a little girl.  
      
      “I’m here to remind you.”
      “Remind me?”
      You are pretending not to know.  She tells you.
      “To remind you of love.”
      The word is hollow.  
        
        Love?

What lies you’ve told.  Empty words with sharpened claws.  
You’ve lost sight of their depth.  They are your prey now.  Surely she grew to be a woman.  A tasty one, you suspect.    
 
       “What happened to you?”

You wish her question could shrink you.  Bring you back to elementary school.  Return you to innocence.    
Not so.  

You are the old man, sitting on a bench, talking to Katie Hawkins – your first crush.  
Dazed by the thought of holding her hand.  The afterlife was more conceivable than the notion of her kiss.  She was your first glimpse of eternity.  Your first love.

Too young to know what to do with your love for her, afraid that her beauty would burn you to ashes if you got too close, all you could do was sneak glimpses.  These glimpses stayed with you.  Lasting to this day.
This day of reckoning.
  
It was no small feat for you to approach her.  
      “Wi… will you sign my yearbook?”  You asked.  
      “Yes.”  She said.  
She said “Yes”.  
Her voice was just as soft and beautiful as her hair.  “Yes”.  It was as sweet as her honey colored skin.  “Yes”.  As mesmerizing as her chocolate, soulful eyes.  “Yes”.  You took your yearbook home and traced her signature with your fingertip.  
“Have a nice summer!”  She wrote.  So kind she was with her “Yes”.  With a smile no less.  
Not sure if you imagined that smile.  It matters not.  You are certain that there was kindness in her voice.  There was kindness in the words she wrote for you.  “Have a nice summer!”

Then there was pornography.  Then the Tijuana whores.  The drugs.  The lust for death.  What happened?

Here you sit.  Corrupted.  Grown.  Facing a distant past.  A memory of romantic childhood.
        
                  “What happened to you?”  She asks.