Joule's Last Glimpse

Oh, where do they go? Memories, do they hide themselves beneath our bedtime sheets, and late at night when they sneak into our ears and minds and hearts like a silk ribbon, do they then escape through our mouths as soft and quickly as the flaps of butterflies’ wings each morning when we rise? Do they rest quietly in the bottom of the curved bellies of half notes, revealing themselves only when called upon by a familiar yet fleeting melody? Or are they that bright flash of Joule’s green light before the sunset, brilliant (if only for a moment) and then swallowed whole by the night, traveling deeper into spaces we will never fully understand until we are the ones doing the swallowing?

If only there were a way to capture them: a net, a continuous melody, a day that never dwindles. Organization would be simple; bottle them and place them in racks, label them accordingly, spray them with formaldehyde and detach their wings. Years later, it would be simple to retrieve them for further examination: watching vanilla ice cream melt into a small ivory pool at a noisy playground, the white picket fence indentations you feel on the salty red lips of your first kiss, the initial heaving sound your breath made when you realized you lost someone, the way the hair of your first love waved resignedly in the wind as you said goodbye for the last time, standing paralyzed, trapped and hardened by your wax-like tears. All it would take is a simple dusting off of the containers to find them and feel them, labeled and still lifelike:

INNOCENCE
BEING
DESPAIR
DENOUEMENT

But how difficult it is to catch and keep butterflies, let alone memories. More precious and colorful than a Monarch, the moment our greedy little fingers try to capture them and clip their paper wings, they disintegrate into tiny fragments like ugly balls of mercury, insidiously splitting until nothing remains but a tiny dark morsel of what should have been, not what was. In tireless efforts of holding on to something beautiful and ephemeral, we destroy its wings and render it broken, subjecting it to the warping and weathering power of the elements. Memories are ugly and dull, and in horror we must watch as they undergo a permanent and reverse metamorphosis, transposing from a cerulean beauty to a fat brown slug, confined to mud and filth for the rest of its being.

So, my dear, after much examination of your wings and the way they flutter so delicately in the sky, I simply cannot bear the thought of keeping you forever, wrongly watching as your wings wilt for my own perennial pleasures. I acquiesce; I must let you go now, and suffer as you escape to the places I will never know until I take my own place as a dark stitch in that final, closing curtain. But I will always retain a small, glowing hope that someday before I fade into the sunset, you will dance down my way once more in a slow song or a warm dream, with all of the power and vibrance (if only for a moment) of Joule’s last glimpse.

If only for a moment,
if, only for a moment.