Christmas in this city is not crystalline but softer, simpler, struck inside of those memories we mightily pin down--we devour with traces of time. My memory is most fated to, fixated on our vibrant past of paper cups and paper dreams to match.
Outside the snow has melted, the sun streaming through the streets with silent joy, a jubilation of having outsmarted even the seasons. It is the same love that struck a chord on the wooden bridge bending beneath my lungs; it is the same love that snuck behind my windowed walls, my own walls, balled up in breaths I was fated to expire. It is the same love that blew my heart away outside of a DC bookstore, filled with metallic paper, that barely caught my eye. It is the same love that, liquorish flavored and frighteningly liquored, melted beside the Brandenburger Tor. It is the same love that struck our wicker chairs, wept into the northern lake shores, drunk high and mighty on the rapid heat that summer brought. All love is the same, in that it both alights and licks your wounds--in romance, familial frenzies: most of all in the walks where tingling fingers meet, failed promise not yet fully deflated, begging to be brought back to life in the louder, limited circumstance where love is lasting--where it may lend a hand.
Paper cups fill my mind, those empty and aching inside of wired bins; those too spirited to hold in hands; those paper cups you curled around, so slight and sweetened on your tongue.
