I’ll believe in anything
You dig it up, brush it off to look at it, and you no longer know why you kept it all this time. What is memory, but a house made of sand?
“Nobody knows you and nobody gives a damn.”
Spring has arrived, the cherry tree M rescued from the trash years ago now sprawling in its pink bloom. Branches of climbing rose grow wild and untended. We walk carefully, avoiding thorns. Despite all that is awakening, coming alive, my days feel small and close, a tight fist. I feel a bit unwell, but how? Amid all this blossoming.
My son and I have been touring campuses. Cheerful students point out the snack bars and game rooms and chirpily describe the relative luxury of one private bathroom in a suite of four bedrooms. I hold back and let my son peek into rooms, around corridors without me. After, we’ll have lunch and joke about “e-sports.” His laughter is easy and generous. We share thoughts on what he’s reading or listening to and I will find it again astonishing that a child becomes an adult. This astonishing child.
I am trying to remember a time before the present. Sometimes I feel like I am disappearing, like a TV screen image compressed to a single point of light. My friends launch their books, give readings, throw their birthday parties. I am always here but not here.
The last time I fought with my sister was years ago. She accused me of being robotic, of not feeling enough. I hung up on her mid-sentence. We didn’t speak for months. It was hurtful, but also enraging. I think about it often now. What was it she thought I was not feeling?
Now, in this inescapable present, I wonder at a time when I thought I knew anything at all.
I found a photo of myself, from decades ago. In a long, tie-dyed crinkle skirt that I suppose was fashionable then. The photo was taken in my college dorm room. I am standing in front of someone I once loved. He has his arms around my waist. We are laughing. I cannot remember who was taking the photo, but I am holding, inexplicably, a giant nerf gun and it is pointed at them.
