I REMEMBER A DAY IN JUNE

I remember her laughter and then, I remember…

…I remember a day in June and the way the river looked as we came down to it, a brown serpent surging between the hills. It flowed cool and hurried amid the green lushness; a creature born of water, silt, and time. I remember the smell of wet mud that clung to everything and above us; clouds crowded the sky from rim to rim, ready to flail at the earth.

We walked barefoot, on the banks of the river, on pebbly silt flecked with the shells of clams, because there was nowhere else to be in town and nothing to do except to be with each other. I remember her eyes, shining like silver almonds through the veil of rain and how her girlish banter rose like a song above the sounds of the river, and that we had the time, to talk of everything and nothing. I remember the taste of her lips; the scent of her cheap Burmese perfume, the warmth in her tongue, the tautness of her body against mine; and how; her breasts rebelled in my palms.

I remember her laughter, a lost melody of my youth, how it bound me to her like an enchantment, on the road back to town. I remember the easy purr of the Vespa on the slick roads, how the sound of the engine and her voice melded in my ears. I remember too well, those other sounds, as we slid past the shuttered houses in the village, past the soldiers, on the road crossing the cemetery.

The years have passed like a staccato of rifle fire, and those other sounds grow louder and threaten to drown out the memory of that June day. It is at such times that I hear the sound of that lost melody of my youth. That laughter that was also an enchantment and I am bound once more to her, and I can remember that I am a creature born of memory, blood, and time.

Then....I remember a day in June…

Lalsiemdik Tusing, 23/10/13.