el, like all cities, is a city of memories. it comes back to me, in flashes- on the bus, out the window, a doorway, a hospital, a footpath. as if i have lived a life before, here- with a family, my own hopes, dreams, and you.
she is everything familiar, wrapped around my eyes so that i do not know when i am. whether this is all happening here, now, or whether i am merely reliving a life.
did we love each other, el and i? i seem to remember something about warmth, and always; but then i turn the corner, and the streets are altogether unfamiliar. no, i had not been there before . . . it must have been some other park, another face, some other street, a different market altogether.

every moment of confusion, of course, loosens the hold of her, el's, memories on me, and suddenly it seems as if it may well have been fiction after all. and yet i wonder, if there was a life, once, and i think that i would not have minded it, so.

- if you see her, say hello -