Between Forgetting and Remembering

Set in Clonakilty, a small coastal town in Co. Cork in Southwestern Ireland.



One year.

One year and three days, to be exact, and he had to forget her all over again every one of those days. He had to forget her many times each day.

With each gust of wind in autumn, he tried to forget her.

And then with each snowflake that melted on his cheek.

And in spring, the new blades of grass taunted him.

Summer though… in summer she ran in the sand in his mind, laughing and running from him, to fall into the sea. His memory would not let go of summer.

Though he pushed at it, saw her slink away with the tide, each time he thought he was free, she was returning to crash into him again. Relentlessly. Beautifully.

And now, seeing her again, unexpectedly, in her cotton dress with the hem bunched in her hand, green salt water swirling around her skinny legs, he let himself be pulled under.

He watched her look out over the empty sea and wondered if in her mind she was back in London. With him. Was she in their warm flat, in the too small bed they couldn’t bear to replace, with the sun streaming across her face, setting her curls on fire?

And what was she doing here? This beach was his to forget. The day she walked away it became his and his alone. One year and three days from when he didn’t stop her. From when ‘sorry’ wasn’t enough.

She dropped the bunched fabric in a motion of futility, her arm hanging limply by her side. The scratchy breeze threw her curls into the air, and suddenly he was forgetting again the way those curls went wild when she was over him, her breasts heaving and her cheeks pink.

The cotton clung to the back of her calves as the water ebbed, pulling the soaked fabric out to sea, and then, with its rushing back, made it crumple against her shins.

And then she was walking away, trudging through the heavy water at her ankles, and he was forgetting again. Forgetting the ripping through his chest when he last watched her walk away.

*****

Leaning on the bright blue painted doorframe, he knocked the layer of sand from his ankles. This green place, with its worn out roads and round old women in bright skirts, with bright smiles, threw everything into sharp contrast. Made her absence more vivid.

Memory is cruel.

It never gave up. Never.

Hours later in the dark, still sitting in an old chair by the window, he gazed out at the sea tumbling over itself, again and again and again and again.

The sea is like his memories. Insistent, unforgiving, exquisite.

Now, her sudden return, the physical proof of his loss, brought with it the memory of disappointment in her honey colored eyes. And that he didn’t think he would ever forget.

Had she come here because it was summer, and they always came here in the summer? Was she reliving the warm days and weeks they spent here every year, in this tiny stone and plaster cottage? Were these sun-bleached rocks and sand a habit she could not break, just as the little beach house, every crack filled with her, was a habit he could not break?

He thought that they were happiest here, and maybe that’s the reason he never left. And perhaps because he could not return to London, where every street and alley seemed to lead to their cozy flat. He could see now that they were always best close together in small spaces, where he could breathe her in and his arms didn’t have far to go.




------------------------
I hope you enjoyed the first part. Please let me know what you thought! Thank you! Ilke