Posted on by J. F. Ramirez Posted in WRITING

song: I See Angels

artist: Tess Parks

album: And Those Who Were Seen Dancing

year: 2022

“It was the end of the world when you left,” she whispered in my ear in the silence of the morning, lying on our backs under the soft sheet of the bed and watching the white gold light stream through the slit in the curtains and catch motes of dust in its path.

These words sink me as I close my eyes in the backseat of the Uber on the ride home while the Sports radio host talks about the Dodgers, what the team can do to prepare for the historically bad postseason and what a difference maker Otani has been. At a stop, I open my eyes and a hedge filled with wine red bougainvillea’s outside the window reminds me of my parents and Mexico and a nostalgia for Hispania that my teenage memories of Saturday are steeped in. I remember the barro jars that we purchased in Baja one weekend and how we transported them across the border in the White 96 Dodge Caravan with the pastel rainbow stripes. I would have rather been skateboarding, but then I most likely wouldn’t have remembered the day.

Paige lives in a one-story house on the southside of an east-west boulevard on the edge of Silverlake, so the line between my place and hers can be cleanly traced along a stretch of the 5 north of Downtown.

I once wrote remember to forget on a birthday card for a friend and the irony is a good axiom for today, so as the car begins to move again, I close my eyes once more and push the world away and in the dark imagine the room as the silent steady motion carries the driver and I and the voices on the radio under the hum of the A/C over the asphalt and I think about the moment and what could happen next. Options, options, options, Max used to tell me. You have to create options and you have to be honest. No bullshit. Even if it hurts. Whatever it takes. It could be worse.

I kissed her on the forehead when I left and I knew in that instant and without hesitation that I should begin the process of forgetting right then and there. Bury the memory so that one day it disappears completely, corrupted and irretrievable. But I should do a lot of things that I don’t end up doing.

“It was the end of your world when I left,” is what she really said because I should tell you the truth and I knew that she was right.