The Dogs of Memory

Here’s the things with memory: it dogs me. At this moment, I am being followed. By the ghost of my first-grade teacher whom I disappointed. By how I treated Allen Mawson, the things I said behind his back. Even by the award I won for a short story about a girl and a waiter in a restaurant crumbling into the Atlantic. I write memories down, but the pages stick to my elbow as I stand up and every step sticks more paper to the soles of my shoes. I tell my therapist about this stuff but my voice echoes and follows me out to my car which reminds me of the Volare I had long ago. The one I used to sometimes steer with my feet while my best friend laughed himself silly. The road was just something we drove across and left behind like some forgettable movie projected on the rearview mirror. Thinking carefully of that moment, my legs crossed one over the other as I sit in my therapist’s waiting room, I feel my toes grip the wheel and turn it this way and that. My friend’s laughter crowds out the dogs of memory barking in the distance as we drive away.