remembering, a story

Do you remember that night that we were eating pistachio gelato on the bench outside your apartment because it was too beautiful to be inside and how you theorized that our having found one another and being together fulfilled a long anticipated prophecy as if we were characters in a C.S. Lewis book?

Do you remember how much you liked when I wore that white v-neck with the splashy flowers on it and how you always complimented me with your eyes?

Do you remember how you used to tell me that my vagina tastes like honey? And how you would lay your head on my stomach as I would massage your scalp and how your tiny curls would fall like snow onto my bare chest?

Do you remember when we drove to Stockton to go thrifting and the car broke down and we had to be towed all the way back to San Francisco and how the tow truck driver told us about how he used to be a medic in the army before he became an auto mechanic before he drove tow trucks and how he said that putting cars back together is a lot like putting people back together?

Do you remember that strawberry and nutella crepe we shared the day we found out your mother was leaving your father?

Do you remember the peacock that was stalking us at the zoo after you gave it a piece of your rice cake?

Do you remember kissing by the Sutro Baths while tourists were snapping photos and how you made that comment about us not being able to shake the paparazzi?

Do you remember when we dogsat for your friends on Castro Street in that seafoam green Victorian and how we rented the entire series of Mary Tyler Moore from the library and we wore hats- yours thin blue and white stripes like a conductor, mine a deep purple baseball hat we found at Crossroads that said Hawaii in big block letters- so we could flip them up each time the theme song played?

Do you remember when your pen leaked all over my dress and how I cried into your arms at the Laundromat because it didn’t all come out in the wash?