The happy place

In the library of my mind, I browse through heaps of disorded yellow scrolls, some of which seem to be made of papyrus.

I am an inexpert — but patient — librarian trying to bring some order into this dust riddled chaos, even though I am still barred from entering the “forbidden section”

Maybe one fine day…

Anyway.

These pages which crumble too, unless handed with care.

Disappear In a cloud of dust.

There are spells in there of considerable power, tricks I’ve learned throughout the years!

And so to bring order to this chaos, I will now look at one which I have seen, there is a type of warm smile I couldn’t place, but I found the memory to which it belongs, so I’ll write it down now, and sort it later.

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It was a dark late summer night, I had been drinking champagne straight from the bottle. Had been holding a beer in the other one, and a cigarette between the fingers even though I no longer smoked.

There was a company event, colleagues.

At one point a few weeks earlier, during lunch, a girl who I didn’t know, but who knew some of the others around the table, she was angry then, talking about having been bullied in school.

There was an anger in her voice, I do not remember exactly what was said, but I reacted to the strong vulgar language.

Then after a while the conversation moved into other topics, like animal cruelty or how a high carb diet was beneficial and healthy.

Meanwhile, I said nothing.

Now during the night, on this event, I saw her again standing alone by the grill from which smoke rose to the dark sky

I went to her and said

— I was bullied in school too

She looked at me then, it took a while for her to place me.

— ”I don’t think it was that bad, though…,” I continued to fill the silence in where I heard only the cracking from the fire, ”…but, I don’t remember anything”.

I think it was the first time I told anyone about the hole in my memory.

— ”are you angry at them?”, she asked

— ”yes”, I said, but I wasn’t really.

— ”I am too, I picture myself hurting them! Murdering then!”

— ”yeah, me too”, but that wasn’t true either.

— ”we’ve gotten our vindications now”, she said

Which was to say that we were both reasonably successful and well paid, having made it still somehow,

— ”that’s true”, I said.

There was a silence,

I saw her turning then to face me, and there, on her face — which had a warm orange glow from the embers — was a smile of compassion, which made me want to cry.

I smiled back, not sure what to say next, so I went to get vegan hot dogs for her, but when I came back, she was gone.