One night, in the slick humidity of late summer I sat in a bar conversing with a girl I barely knew.
She and I were playing a game of summer love,
though I, hardened to love, was playing a game of another sort.
I don't remember much from the nights preceding, or much from the days to follow,
but I do remember one thing.
I remember her telling me that when we exhume bits of the past
those memories are modified in our minds,
as if every time we think back,
we leave something behind.
She reached her ultimate point: that those things which we think about
most, those tender and treasured memories are the most altered.
The most fake.

I got a letter from her the other day, a small envelope packed full of the past.
It is sitting on my desk,
unopened.