Enter | Skyline Drive, Shenandoah National Park, Virginia | Apr 2009

Raul Gutierrez, Are you Arabic?:

Twenty two years ago I was sitting in an empty dining car on a train from Princeton, New Jersey to Washington D.C., when a girl who I did not know slid into the seat across the table from me. … We sat there in silence for the good part of an hour and then she abruptly rose and said, “You will remember me,” and left. I never saw her again.

I remember the sound of the train, the snow swirling by, and the color of the sky which turned from lapis to midnight. I remember I was wearing a plaid shirt with a missing button under my father’s overcoat and I remember in my pocket I was carrying a polaroid picture of a lady in black carrying a black umbrella in the snow. I remember the blackwatch scarf the girl wore draped around her neck, cashmere probably, and I remember that smell of vanilla, but I couldn’t tell you a single thing about her face, her voice, or even the color of her hair. So, if by some strange fate, you happen to read this girl on the train: “No. It turns out I haven’t remembered you, you have flickered away.”

What’s your fondest “lost memory”?