The girl on the tram

At random I’m reminded of a girl, and she makes me stop what I’m doing.
I remember us sitting in the footwell of a crowded tram, holding hands.
We were young, juvenile even, but how I felt in that moment;
Not wanting the tram-ride to end.
Mind and body swirling with hormones, pheromones and emotions.
The memory of the softness of her skin.
Mentally shifting everything in my life, psychologically making room for how that moment felt.

I never touched her again, and we did not become partners after that.
The moment was burried under a thousand stupid things I did in my youth, but now as an adult, free of such things, the moment can be lifted out and admired, shining with the promise of love and affection.

This has been happening often.
Interruptions that I cannot control.
I imagine it has much to do with illness and medication, and a good dose of my own sense of abstraction. Like a David Lynch film, fragments of memory or perhaps fantasy intrude upon my awareness.
I wish they were all of the men and women I’ve loved through life, our naive fleeting moments, words, looks, touches of the body.
I recall the various partners I’ve had, and the same thing happens. Today I cannot feel all the things that made our relationships bad. Those bad things are like dust that falls from a glittering precious object.
The sum-total of those moments of happiness is almost overwhelming, and I feel myself wrapped in a sense of love, acceptance and intimacy, even-though at present I’m without a partner.

Not the kind of happiness that draws a smile, but the kind that brings warmth like a duvet in winter, that makes one close one’s eyes in the darkness of night, head against the pillow, and have a moment of complete peace before sleep.