Brushing up against those old memories that walked along the blackberries, some voices caught my attention. It was all familiar, but I couldn't recall what exactly was said. There were two voices, aside from mine and Conor's- one female, bright and carefree; the other, male, seemed nervous but still outwardly confident. She talked about how much she missed being here, and he spoke tentatively of philosophy and song lyrics. I hit pause and stopped walking, and Conor looked at me suspiciously, since he didn't recognize anything as odd, but kept quiet. I took a small survey of the surroundings; Nothing was completely out of place, but everything whispered of how you're missed. The gravel was new and ironically soft, but underneath, I could tell it was trying to reach out, tell me of how long it's been since you were here. The ditch was empty back then, but now contains the remains of the winter's snow, traveling noisily to an unknown destination, confident, excited, half-concealing the small grasses that compared notes on the evening you spent here. The sky boasted of seeing everything that happened then, and the sun recalled shivering behind the clouds that witnessed a walk down the same road. The blackberries, too, vocalized their opinions of our flavor preferences. It became so loud there that I had to block out the silence with the click of the play button and the resulting Track 12. With an ever suspicious look, Conor continued the last verse to his perfect sonnet as I continued walking. My old favored green converse made subtle diamond-patterned tracks in the spring's soil, wet with the ditchwater, while I found myself at the point where the second field ends on the other side of the brush and cattails. This particular point, of course, has a distinctive place in my memory, as we spent a while here sitting on a fallen (or not put up yet) power line/telephone pole. I found it, upright as intended, about ten feet away. I was drawn to it, and spent a few minutes sitting up against it with Conor on the other side, still persistent in his vocalizations. It was half a comfort, really, to hear him so incessant, a welcome distraction from what's occurring elsewhere. I lost myself, forgot myself again, as Conor hit Track 18, which halfway paralleled a relationship we had so long ago, longer now than it seems, with a metaphor concerning roots, holding the earth, and faucets spilling words, or something equivalent. I wasn't all that awake. The sun was drifting lower as it ended, and Conor tried convincing me to stay outside a bit longer, but the pockets containing only toffee wrappers were only slightly more influential. My shadow accompanied us on the way back, more similar to myself than she had been all day, and she kept pace walking on the surface of the water beside us. Conor seemed wary of her, being as her silhouette reminded him of someone he was trying to forget, so he kept me between them. Her contours flickered among the burning tones of the field, but she didn't seem to mind, so long as her profile was pieced back together. Once we had arrived at the house, Conor was content to stay in my room while I made dinner. I allowed him to relax and recharge his batteries, and after the dishes were cleared from the sink, I found him collapsed on my bed, curled against the wall, asleep. I stood watching him for a minute at most, then turned out the light and left.