distance (part three)

Music really is the most powerful memory trigger for me.

At my current part-time place of employment, there's a cacophony that constantly bombards my eardrums, between the sounds of the activity in the mall outside and all the demostration flatscreens whose product advertisements are set on infinite loops and only turn off at closing, but perhaps the most invasive sounds rain down from the ceiling loudspeakers: the Top 40 hits corporate radio. Nothing but the hits.
Sometimes the songs wash over me in a wave of middle-school nostalgia, helping form images in my brain of riding the bus to school five mornings a week.
Some songs I roll my eyes at, or openly scoff (especially if it's a Nickelback song).

Sometimes, though, I get a doozy of a trigger in the form of a song that reminds me of something that, up until that moment, I'd nearly forgotten.
Today, I heard the song that he played when I danced with him in the hotel room, when my friend had gone to bed and it was just us, and he started singing. I seriously heard him sing "give all my secrets away," his breath warm and tense on my ear, his beard against my cheek, his lips so close...I don't think I've ever had a memory that vivid, surface so quickly. I almost got the bends; I touched my fingers to the front counter, almost leaning on it.

Bands I can't/won't listen to anymore because of ex-boyfriends or past lovers:
Great Big Sea,
OneRepublic,
Fun.,
"Somewhere Beyond the Sea,"
"Secrets."

Seriously, though:
That memory was too real. It only lasted for two seconds,
But my stomach dipped so far, it must've landed on my diaphragm,
Because I couldn't breathe for two seconds.

I could hear him. That's no good.
Now I can't stop hearing that song.

-Dana Winter