One and Done

I know I've been to Chicago, But I only remember the snow. I know that I've been to Albuquerque, but I mostly just remember the hot marketplace with dried chilies twice the length of my face. I know that I've been to New Orleans, but the stacked-house jazz-music French Quarter and cold, sinking graveyards and binging on three different types of shrimp and grits, all silky smooth and perfect are all I can recall. I know that I've been to Ashville, but I can only remember drinking a chai milkshake inside of a red double-decker bus. I know that I've been to Montana, but the sight of the grey-blue grass rolling and a kite rising in the sharp wind and purple mountains through the windows are all I can remember. I know that I've been to D.C., but cherry blossom trees and the white, too-intense eyes of 16th President of the United States and the long illustrious halls of the Smithsonian are all that I remember. I know that I've been to Nashville, but all I remember is the thick pillars of the Parthenon and the grassy slope that led to them and the antique-glowing insides of a shop. I know that I've been to California, but all I can remember is the heavy heat and riding high inside of a Dumbo at Disney Land. I know that I've been to Myrtle Beach, but itchy sand between my toes and disappointment over forgetting a bathing suit are all I remember. I know I've been to Greenville, but all I remember is an archway a pink glass sculpture in a park and the perfect golden coins and great tongues of orange-red flame that swept across the turning of the leaves. I know I've been to Port St. Joe, but long beaches and avocado socks and chasing crabs across the beach at ten o'clock at night and sandy marshmallows are all I can remember. I know I've been to Montréal, but floppy heavenly crepes for breakfast and rivets of syrup flowing down and the people on the streets and a doorway with a man and his cardboard drawing of the city and lingering beside him before running off are all I remember. By car, by plane, by bus, by train. Journeys that follow between footsteps. Hotel rooms and a new bed for a week. Been there once, then never again. New, but blurring together now. In the past, a memory. Places are one, and then we're done.