A Trail Leading Back
an old sage once told me that when you find someone you like, you take them by
the ankles and you shake them. all their good qualities, the things you fell in
love with them for, will come out of their pockets and fall onto the floor. you
grab these things, he said spreading his arms wide, grab them and you take them
to the bank. you get yourself one of those fancy safety deposit boxes they have
way in the back, and you take these good qualities of theirs, lock them up, and
hide the key. hide the key, he whispered, because there will be dark times.
times when you don't exactly recall why you are with this person, this
stranger. you will wake in the middle of the night, confused because you don't
remember the person you are sleeping next to. days will pass when neither of
you have uttered one word to the other. when this happens you are going to have
to find the key to the safety deposit box. once you find the key, you are going
to have to get to the bank, and unlock that box. look inside it and remember.
it won't make sense at first, because remember you two are strangers. but once
it does it will be like a baby’s song, a string of vowels, devoid of all
consonants, like bubbles rising up into the sky and leaving a trail. a trail
leading back.
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Erika Moya is a painter and writer. Her work has appeared in Qaartsiluni, the
Smoking Poet, the Holly Rose Review, SN Review, the Toronto Quarterly, and
Mosaic: Art and Literary journal of the University of California, Riverside. She attends the MFA program of the University of North Carolina Wilmington.
