Nicole Balsamo

 

Selective Memory

It is 61 degrees in Washington the summer of 2012. You are twenty and perched beside Riley on the bleachers at the racetrack, which she dragged you to the moment you stepped off the plane. She tells you this is her favorite place, this dirt-streaked, hoof-beaten, rickety rig off the highway. She does not say This is why I want to share it with you in the same way that when she asks how your flight was, tells you how impressed she is that you braved your aerophobia to fly alone across the country, you tell her It was fine and not I would do anything for you.

You can remember the sting of cold metal through your jeans, but not the color of the horses. You’ve forgotten the taste of the stadium hotdog, but not the panic-surge up your throat when she tried to toss the receipt in the trash. Her dimpled smile when you grabbed her wrist and said you wanted to keep it. Almost a decade later, it is still buried in your “memory box,” a bloated, breaking shoebox that haunts the closet corner of every apartment you have ever lived in. You never touch it, but also refuse to throw it away.

You can’t recall whether the blanket she wrapped around your shoulders was wool or crochet or cotton, but you can still smell the sandalwood scent of her skin in the fibers. You can still hear the warm pride in her tone when she announced, as curious, well-meaning passersby asked why you were bundled and trembling, that you were visiting her all the way from Florida, a Sunshine State transplant unused to chilly summers.

You are uncertain what her father made for dinner that night, but you know it was the Fourth of July because of the wild, windchime song of her laughter as firecrackers spat against the concrete. You can’t remember if her bedding was maroon or deep mauve, but you remember, with painful clarity, the betrayed look on her face when she told you that she loved you and you did not immediately say it back, not because you didn’t, but because love was a language you had never been taught.

Seven silent years pump cement through your veins, and you wonder if she ever thinks of you. If you haunt the racetrack, your heartbeat as alive as the hooves pounding down the derby, or if she turns her head as she drives by. If firecrackers feel like whip snaps, if she regrets making you the welcome banner that she waved at the airport terminal, still rolled, sealed, and stowed in the back of your closet. If the rare burn of Seattle sunshine buries you in her skin the way she still lives under yours.

 

 

 

Bio

Nicole Balsamo is a queer writer of fantasy, science fiction, and urban fantasy. Her work often explores dysfunctional families, why we love the people who hurt us, and how far we will go for the people that we love. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Central Florida, where she wrote Vampire Nonsense almost exclusively.

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