For Thought

When she layed down to sleep that night, Claire didn't know what she remembered. The more she milled around in her murky pool of memories, it seemed, the more dirt she managed to kick up, only muddying the waters further. After what seemed like hours of endless searching, her mind fell upon one very specific detail.

It wasn't the cool, wet rain that leisurely dripped onto her slightly dampened skin or the warm humid air that tousled her messy blond curls and threw them about. It wasn't the dimly shining moon that limply scattered dark shadows across the usually bright and welcoming city, whose glow had disappeared with the darkened streets in the endless night.

It wasn't even the warmth of his soft, melting lips crashing into hers with such force she could taste his colorful and loving affection. Not his hands. Those hands so strong they seemed they could hold the world if he had wanted them to. She remembered how they had been holding her gently, tightly, almost as if she was the world.

And it certainly wasn't the way he looked at her, with those vividly colored hazel eyes so full of life, of purity and of love. They enchanted her. Trapped her. She felt a strange sense of fear that if she were to blink and miss even one moment of the tingling buzz that gave her heart an electric shock, she would float away, carried off by some unseen wind that would take her high into the clouds and never let her return.

That night, Claire only remembered the tickling touch of the grass on her bare feet the moment he told her goodbye.

"You can't catch me! You can't catch me!' the little boy shrieked, sprinting through the grassy field that was dotted with a rainbow of blossoming flowers in the early spring time. 6 year old Claire smiled wildly as she raced after her bestest friend, a crazed gleam in her unsettling blue eyes. Laughing and screaming, the pair chased each other through countless hours, running and laughing in the bright sunlight.

That was the first time they had visited the hidden meadow.

Claire remembered the heat of the sun on her ever smiling face, the dampened coolness of the dirt underneath her bare feet. She could almost picture every detail of the day so exactly that she could paint the memory on a clean sheet of white paper, splashing her thoughts out in hues of light green, sky blue and bright yellow.

She smiled to herself in the bleak darkness. Memories began to spill out of her like slick water sliding from a crystal glass. They flowed through her, flashing pictures in front of her eyes. She saw it. All of it. Playing hide and go seek in the thick forest. Picnics of peanut butter and jelly sandwitches in the searing summer sun. Having races in which he usually won, unless he had gotten in touch with his gentlemanly side and slowed down to let her pass. Then tonight, their fist kiss in the drizzling rainstorm.

That was what she loved best about Sal. He was always there. He was as solid as a brick wall that would never crumble away or rot. Sal had always been hers, and this she knew from the very begining. She had complete faith that no amount of lip gloss or straightened hair could pull him away from her. They had an unshatterable, inseperable titanium bond.

It was hers. Her kiss.

Claire should've known that she would only get one.