Memoir of a Walk

Sometimes what appears to be the most meaningless and insignificant memory is in reality the one which is held closest to the heart.
Night had settled upon us, and I was … alone.
         I think I liked it that way, at least I did then. I leaned against the chainlink fence, no higher than my waist. It was cool, a cold that penetrated my jacket and seemed to send a wave of numbness through me, but it passed. My hands were chilled, as if to mock the time I had spent scouring my room for my cheap cotton gloves, and I shoved them deep in my jean pockets. I curled my toes within my shoes and rolled my shoulders once or twice. The cold wasn’t enough to send me home.
         What am I doing here, really? I pushed off from the fence and started walking across the courtyard with slow, uneven steps. The stars were small in the violet sky and the occasional cloud meandered casually past though I could scarcely feel a breeze.
         I watched my breath fog about me as if I had never before seen such a thing and I allowed a smile to curl at my lips as I remembered a time ages and ages ago when Cory and I had pretended to smoke with our juice straws. The memory was absurd and so far removed from … everything around me. I paused and regarded my surroundings. A leafless elm, an abandoned playground, an empty school. I marveled at the foreboding of that single tree, how each limb was laid bare before me. I took the time to let my eyes rove over it. It reminded me that not four months ago I had been lying under its browning bows staring up at the patches of blue sky and twirling a dead leaf in my tanned fingers. Do all things undergo such change? I supposed that they did. And then there were the grotesque slides and the eight swings creaking in the silent night. Torture chambers, or what I had imagined them to look like as night time shadows played with my mind. How did children seem to bring happiness and just a feeling of over all rightness to a place which now seemed so ugly and barren? The school itself was nothing to me. A place where I had learned, cried, and laughed. But such things at that moment did not enter my  thoughts.
         What am I doing? My feet began to move once more. The place made me sad yet I had no desire to leave. Extracting my hands from my pockets, I flexed them, feeling the sting as they protested such movement. Truly gloves such as these were worthless. But then, I think on some level I didn’t mind the ache the cold always brought to my bones. Perhaps I even thought it refreshing.
         Without having really noticed it, I had left the courtyard and was now wandering along the outside halls, pathways sheltered from the sun or rain. Ahead the garden loomed, or perhaps that wasn’t the correct term. Really it was nothing more than a patch of dirt with a single tree. But the very fact that someone attempted to grow something there made it a garden to me anyway. As I drew closer, I found that not even a weed graced the ice-encrusted dirt. Walking up to the tree, my feet crunching against the ground, I stripped my right hand of its black glove to reveal fairly pale skin, and laid it against the trunk. Sometimes, I like to touch a tree, to feel its coarse bark beneath my skin. I have wondered then if it was some strange method of mine to prove to myself that what I saw was indeed there. It wasn’t like I had hallucinations, or at least none to my knowledge, it was just that it was … nice. To know for certain, I mean. Well, I’d never claimed to be completely sane anyway.
         I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the tree. I was suddenly very, very tired. I could just imagine drifting off here, sinking to the hard ground and then nothing. Just tired, I must have thought. One last memory comes back to me of a little girl of eight and how back then it never occurred to anyone that we truly were young and that years later we would still be young. I would sometimes during the spring stop by this tree to pick up a fallen petal and rub it gently across my cheek. Softer then silk.
         What the hell am I doing. It isn’t really a question anymore, just a thought echoing throughout me.
         “Why … nothing. Nothing at all.” I say, suddenly compelled to answer despite this. My eyes must have brightened with humor, and my voice must have sounded awkward, loud in a place of ghosts and half forgotten moments.