silver springs {h.s. au}

"songbirds are singing"

June 2018

Willow found it in the pocket of an old denim jacket.

Crumpled and worn, ink so faded she could barely make out the writing stamped across it. An old concert ticket from when she and Harry had gone to see Fleetwood Mac when they came to London. It was, inconsequential. This ticket meant nothing. A piece of paper with ripped edges.

But as Willow brushed her thumb over the front memories flooded her head. Suddenly she was twenty-one and on top of the world. With an album working it's way up the charts and shows of her own to play. Watching her favourite band with her favourite person. Harry's arms wrapped around her, chin against her shoulder, warm breath tickling her cheek as he sang the words softly.

The moment passed, and Willow was left stood in her flat holding onto an old jacket, alone. But the feeling lingered.

Nostalgia was an odd thing. There were times it was soft and kind. Memories shown through a rose coloured glass; spinning on a reel. Slide after slide, as if saying, here we were happy, here we were in love, here we thought it would last forever. But other days –other days nostalgia was suffocating. Like vines that worked their way through your ribs, wrapping around your heart until it snapped clean in two. Nostalgia would laugh, and you would be left to pick up the fragments.

The floors creaked as Willow walked through her flat into her bedroom. Grabbing the old box of memories off the dresser. She placed it down on the coffee table, and flopped down on her sofa. Cigarette burning and sounds of the Rumours album filtered through the record player as Willow leant forward. Willow balanced the cigarette between her lip and pulled the top of the box off.

Memories of Willow's life flooded the room.

And she added one more, dropping the concert stub onto the top. How many nights had she spent going through her flat? All the boxes that had been left packed. Over and over, Willow cut them all open and allowed every memory she had to spill across her floors, seep their way into the walls. Now, it was done. Boxes scattered around her, things to keep, things to throw out.

For a brief moment, Willow had considered throwing her memory box out. All the photos, bar napkins covered in words, concert stubs, all of it. But Willow had always been one for nostalgia, one to hold onto things. This box meant something, her memories, her life, it had been real. Willow couldn't throw that away.

Orange light from the streetlamp outside poured into her living room, matching the glow at the end of her cigarette. Willow brushed her fingers across some of the photos scattered across the top. One where she had been barely twenty and curled around Harry on the disgusting couch Liam had found in an alley. Back in that tiny flat in Brixton. Young and fresh faced, naive to so much.

There were times Willow wondered where they had gone. The girl she had once been, the boy Harry had once been.

But she couldn't do that. No more what if's and no more of the guilt that had become her companion. Life happened, and things hadn't gone how she thought, she lived through it, she survived.

In the corner of the room, the record shifted and familiar chords filled all the empty corners. Tears were slow, but Willow didn't brush them away. The glow of her cigarette burned brighter and grew smaller with each breath. Sat there, Willow listened to the song. Words she had sung so often, words Harry had marked into his skin.

Crushing the last of her cigarette in the ashtray, Willow grabbed the pack that had become a permanent fixture on her coffee table and in her back pocket. A bad habit that Willow had allowed herself to become intimate with. Replacing one addiction with another. Convincing herself one was better than the other.