MPLB The Age of Candy

“Damn it.” He said the ‘candy store’ was already closed. It was a long line he’d fallen to the train of, and he still hadn’t gotten a taste. It was New Years Eve, and whatever he did his memory tended to fail him, and he’d thought a little of the new psychotropic would help with that this year.

Still, for all the hours he’d camped out, he was the last in line. Pleasure seekers. Here he was hunting for a gentle reprieve from his inadequate memory, and these youngins were dallying on memory lane. 

It was little loss to him, he hadn’t celebrated properly in years, so it was little use being angry. He still was, but it wasn’t useful. He knew that.

So he paced simmering in dissatisfaction over the apparent working hours of the candy store.

“Hey George, is that you?”, He looked over at that voice, it’s source, like water running from the clouds. Shoulda been snow, when he saw her.

It was always some time in the last weeks of the year, when she’d find her way to his Vexation. Like a shark to blood. Didn’t help that it was every year. His mood was always low when she made haste to appear, and no matter the year she trapped him in some oddity to ponder.

He’d seen her so many times, he’d lost track, and while he couldn’t remember when they first met, he can’t imagine it happening any earlier either. She only acknowledged it half the time, but it still happened.

“It is, what has you pacing?”, she asks in that ever calm way he would’ve expected if not for the late hours of her visitation. She looked around trusting that he’d answer, almost certainly noticing his camp set out. A few bags, some water, some snacks, a fold out chair.

He should at least prepare to leave, but that general habit of pleasantries wasn’t something he could shirk.

“What has you out so late in the year?”, he asks of her, it wasn’t his business but with his luck she’d answer.

“Are we not strangers anymore?”, she asks back, an ageless thing catching an old fib. She’s never been any such thing as an age, or aging, but still there’s a clarity to how she sees him.

Like a child. He’s much too old for that.

“So what if we’re strangers, we can still be old friends if we want.” he says nonchalantly, a defense for what he believed was ordinary.

“You really sap the energy out of every phrase, don’t you?”, she spoke like she’d heard the words before. He made peace with the distraction, and sat back down. He knew he was being childish, a last ditch procrastination in the name of nostalgia.

“Since you seem to understand better now, maybe we can talk about it.” she said, sitting down beneath the store’s awning. “Do you remember those words you stole?” she asked, seeing lost things. 

Whether in his head, or next on his breath.

It was a coffee shop that he’d remembered being local, though he was old enough now that it was certainly closed for good.

“Is it just me, or is there something between us?”, she’d said to him, he couldn’t remember her right then, but he’d remember some new year later when she’d say he had.

All he could recount was an infatuation, the notion of a woman before him and the unfortunate irrelevances of that period in his life. He was young once and as the young always seem to do, he’d wasted it.

“That’s when you think we met, interesting,” she’d said back then, “You really don’t remember, isn’t that alright?”, like he’d had a concept of his own ignorance, and this was some grand depth that he’d forsaken.

“It doesn’t matter. I’m the forgetful sort after all.” He doesn’t remember speaking after that, but he was sure as anything that it didn’t matter that time.

“Do you remember anything with me, about our talks?” he finally thought to say, concerned that their yearly preponderance was one sided.

“What would you like me to say?” She settled into a string of questions, “That I have a memory for however long you think you’ve seen me? or would you prefer to believe that I’ve always known you. That there’s some secret form of mine that has grown old with you?”

George stopped for a bit, he knew how people were when they became defensive, though he knew her well enough that such terms amounted to mockery.

“Well, is there?”, even with his luck she didn’t answer right then.

The world fell silent, white snow on a graying sky. It should’ve been hot, was the feeling of his core, some strange shade of lizard brain had decided that. Even if she wanted to continue, it was late and he should pack up his things.

That was true either way, but she was still the rain.

He’d heard it in her voice, year after year, and even now just a figment, he felt it again. He needs to pack up his things.

He moves to do so, stashes away in his bag, throws away the empties. He hadn’t eaten everything, but he wasn’t scared of leftovers. 

“We’d meet every year, and you’d show me this new heartbroken self.” she finally says, like he isn’t half way off prepared to go home. Like she hadn’t wasted their time together.

“You were small once, and I still found you lost in the last-first days of the year,” she says, like the memory is older than him. In a way it was. She’d always been there.

He had been young once.

“you don’t celebrate the time I have with you.”, He stops and watches her, he never knew her name, and she still calls silent such impetuous convictions. She looks into his soul, like she always did before.

She tries to hold his hand, everything is cold. 

“Why did you want to remember? isn’t it enough to know you’ve forgotten something beautiful?” She holds him dear and begs for something she could never understand.

“I am a fleeting thing you know,” he said, she wasn’t a fool but slowly still, “I don’t know that I ever had the chance to see.”

He doesn’t even feel the space between thoughts against her glower, “But you’re always gone before I know it, and I’m never sure.”

“I was never gonna last long. I can’t keep letting go.” In that moment she disappears, the year is done, and there’s a candy in his hand.