A series of moments

I.

Depression can feel like the end of a fever: aches and pains giving way to the sanctity of chills and sudden sweat. Or temporal like the tides, low and high again, depending on position.

Sometimes it can feel long and stretched out, an endless summer or an old red-orange West Texas basin. I’m hesitant to denounce it or call it quits. I know it can come in cycles. Still, doing the work can chip away at it and reposition your brain. Still, I can feel its subtle shifts or its gentle departure.

II.

I’ve been trying to chart the moments between the moments or the small bits of life that have made me happy lately. Here are just a few of them:

III.

The impossible image of a Terlingua nighttime, the strained sound of my grandmother’s voice, the fresh laundry smell of the first man I ever loved. Each sense replaced by something new: the sight of my dog stretching first thing in the morning, the bright laugh of my partner, and the fall smell of dropping leaves mixed with pumpkin guts and seeds.

I think, of course, there are layers to memories; history to senses. Sometime, late in life, you will recall your first taste of love: the stickiness of lips or flesh, the tender-tart way it lingered on your tongue. But let’s be honest, could you even tell me what it first felt like to press lip to lip? To feel another’s tongue wrapped around your own? Could you ever describe something so incomparable?