It is a quiet night. The humid darkness has settled down into an inky blackness. Strange thoughts flit and race each other across eyebrows and through temples. Glorious music rises in volume to fill the room with hope and a sliver of despair.

The night recalls other nights from the past. Nights when alcohol flowed like your smile down my spine. The singer asks my question. Where were you? I remember that night when we succumbed to the emptiness of lust. A night when our future got divided by the distance between our heartbeats. A night where the sweat on our eyebrows separated our hearts. So many nights between our words. So much darkness inside our pupils.

That road walks into my memory. A long, meandering and lonely road that seemed to run parallel to the road through the stars above. The concert was long over and the music had dripped from our veins to unite with our memories. We walked without a word to the lake. The moon was behind us trying to interrogate our silence with his dim light. But we weren’t to be bothered. The lake shone weakly as a lone peacock settled in for the night. On a rough stone we sat and kissed. Do you remember?

The tingle and burn of alcohol is a random constant, loosening tongues and cobwebs. The art of good drinking is to stretch the moment until it breaks behind our minds and forms new connections.

On this night we were the survivors of a huge drunken party. The New Year had come and gone, taking with it innocence and a love for the unknown. The unknown was the now. You sat behind me and whispered into my ear names of people from your past. I closed my eyes and floated on your words as your roving fingers caressed my neck and ears. Bliss hovered around my lips and turned their corners into a small smile. Then we did not need much to be happy. A night full of magic was enough to satisfy our hunger.

Should we keep talking as he suggests? Will that help? I do not know but memories do not help either. Music collects them and unleashes them at the most inopportune of times. And I drown. I drown in an ocean of images. Images made during nights that held so much promise. Nights whose dawns were light rays striking the soft down on your shoulders. Nights whose signatures we collected on our closed eyelids.