I heard a voice coming from an open window, a voice I thought I knew, a song I had heard so long ago. I had forgotten the song but I remembered looking into the sun.

Time passes, we forget.

Memory waits…

From an open window somewhere above me, the song came again. The memory of you fell into this crowded street of blinding light, carried to me on the song I couldn’t see, by words I barely remembered. It was you, it was me, I remembered the song. Crowds of unknown people passed by, jostling and nudging as I looked into the sun and looked for the song. I could not see you, only shapes and shadows, dark moving across light. I remembered the light in your long hair as the breeze lifted it away from your face…your face…your face. The memory of a day, a time – it was always summer. I wanted to remember the light, the sun in your hair, the warmth of the afternoon on those days when we walked in the noise of the hot crowded city and lay down beneath the infinite blue empyrean in fields of summer gold so long ago – you in that pale yellow dress and your hair so long, strands of dark molten gold glowing in the radiant sunlight, a banner of flame fluttering in the breeze that kissed your face like you kissed my face…the afterglow still warms the memory.

But we had to let it go, we never sang again and so the song faded to silence as time passed and slipped away. The song of a memory, the memory of a fragment of time, of time past and time passed and time passing…we forget. The song sang a picture of that time so long ago. It was always summer – or so it seemed. It’s hard to remember once we forget, but memory waits… and so I remembered the song, the words and the music – the memory of then. Always summer.

We were other people then, we are other memories now; we were young and beautiful, we had time. It was summer and when we sang – sad with the song – we looked into the sun.

But time passes and we forget. I try to remember fragments of time past, before time passed. I have faded pictures that flicker across the walls in the moonlight, I have songs I can barely hear that I can’t remember. What I want to remember is not certain and not always clear. We try to see what we want the memory to be and so often we forget. The memory has its own memory. I want to see but the window is cracked and covered with time’s dust.

We were young, time was the future that we didn’t look for; we only did whatever made us happy. We sang songs that made us cry and we looked into the sun. Now you are here again and I remember; in the song drifting from an unseen window above the blinding light of the street, I remember but I can’t see you. I remember a memory. I remember the sun. Now the forgotten song is over – as it was so long ago; but I remembered what I had forgotten while I looked into the sun. The memory is enough. Time passes, we forget.

Memory waits.

For you who I remembered and all those I forgot,
We who sang the song and looked into the sun.