Ooltewah

I left all my bags in Curtis' house and rode down the hill, along the railroad tracks. My bike feels twitchy without the weight. It bounces too much on the ruts and potholes, and when I try to turn, the whole bike tends to lean more than I'm used to.
With the breeze in my hair, I can stand the heat. I pass a dozen moms pushing strollers and a few people walking their dogs. I see one man jog past, shiny with sweat. He smiles at me as I roll by.
I'm running errands, today. The professors I failed to see are probably at home; everything in Collegedale shuts down on Fridays. I'll just go mail home some things I probably (definitely) don't need to pull up hills with me and I'll get back to the house to chill until somebody comes up with something to do. It's Stephen's birthday, but he's at work. Things are really relaxed. I pull out my phone to check where the Ooltewah post office is, and I feel my chest go all tight. I had forgotten. I'm a hundred yards from Delight's old house.
I stuff my phone back in my pocket and pedal away without looking. That tight feeling just haunts me all the way to the post office and all the way back. Panting from the heat and the bicycle ride is so close to crying that I can feel the fear and the clutch of it at the back of my throat. My stomach feels empty and angry. My arms and legs feel weak.
At the corner, I turn into her old parking lot where I used to go on the scooter. I hop the joint between lot and road and fly through the gaps in the speed bumps. My eyes are stretching, waiting for the nondescript brick building to hove into view. When I pull up opposite to it, a thousand thousand memories try their best to break the seal and drown me. I don't know. I remember being so proud that I had found a leather jacket--she had wanted one--and being disappointed that it wasn't one she liked. I gave her that jacket in this parking lot. I remember sitting on the hood of my car waiting for her to come out and talking to some kids playing in the grass under the shade of a tree. I remember the metallic clang of the steps to her door, the place where they hid the extra key, the smell of her car after it sat in the sun, the roughness of the splatter pattern on her bedroom ceiling.
I don't think I can write anymore about it. I know I didn't have the strength to go to the place where I kissed her first, in the warm rain of the last days of fall heat. I know I would break if I went there.
But maybe every pilgrimage has to revisit where the thing began.