Whatever enjoyment I might have had at the time would disappear overnight like snow melting on a warm roof.

I step back further, until I feel cold tiles against my back. It is then I get the glimmer that I associate with memory. As my mind tries to settle on it, it flutters away, like ashes caught in a breeze, and I realize that in my life there is a then, a before, though before what I cannot say, and there is a now, and there is nothing between the two but a long, silent emptiness that has led me here, to me and him, in this house.

Do you trust me? The question is usually asked before an admission that such trust is misplaced.

Thoughts race, as if, in a mind devoid of memory, each idea has too much space to grow and move, to collide with others in a shower of sparks before spinning off into its own distance.

I closed my eyes and he kissed my eyelids, barely brushing them with his lips. I felt safe, at home. I felt as if here, against his body, was the only place in which I belonged. The only place I had ever wanted to be. We lay in silence for a while, holding each other, our skin merging, our breathing synchronized. I felt as if silence might allow the moment to last for ever, which would still not be enough.

I closed my eyes and abandoned myself to my grief. It felt better, somehow, to be helpless. I didn't feel ashamed.

What are we, if not an accumulation of our memories?