Short story snippet

I was going to write something original tonight, but am in too foul a mood. Instead I'm recycling something old. Well, old to me - new to you.

I wrote this a long time ago about someone I once knew. I picked it up again recently in an effort to make something of it. It's still a work in progress, but enjoy it anyway. Suggestions and criticism always welcome.

ad xx

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Now that it's over, I've been searching for the one thing that I can keep.

The one memory that will last longer than pictures or notes scrawled on the corner of a napkin.

Although I have those too.

But I can only remember that day last spring when I turned a corner and saw him standing in front of the fruit store. The collar of his orange windbreaker was perked up. Bags weighed his arms down. His eyes were cast upwards to read a sign in the store window. Skin stretched so taut over his Adam's apple.

And I thought, “This is what he looks like when I’m not around, when he’s not being the John I know.”

Right then, with John standing before in his purest form, I glimpsed the universe of tenderness and pain and fear and courage inside him. All the beautiful things I could never see because of the angry push-and-pull that defined us. It was like seeing John as a child and I immediately understood that he was forever out of my reach. That I would never know the man standing in front of that window because I didn't know the words to lead me there.

So that's what I must keep. Isn't it terrible? The only memory I have and I don't even get a role in it.

Other than to exit.