This is a memory. But it is also a thousand memories. It can be repeated so many times, only the fruit changes, the game we play, the location where we sit, undisturbed, unexpectant.
"Is it a movie we’ve cast ourselves, a portal back into a living place, an invention, incomplete but completable, a universe we own and furnish, a diorama or an edited photograph—or is it just a memory?"
"Have I worried them so smooth with my remembering that they're no longer rocks, but stones—recollected images collected from a past, recollected images collected from a self, a made self made safe, made simple, made naked and as unencumbered as flesh?"
"Or perhaps they just don’t fit the narrative I’ve sewn; the narrative which explains why I feel wistful now, why I sigh when I drive past schools, when I remember the specific heat of the California sun on the top of my head, when I cannot access what has already been lived, what has left me, what was but is no longer."
"Is it a movie we’ve cast ourselves, a portal back into a living place, an invention, incomplete but completable, a universe we own and furnish, a diorama or an edited photograph—or is it just a memory?"
"Have I worried them so smooth with my remembering that they're no longer rocks, but stones—recollected images collected from a past, recollected images collected from a self, a made self made safe, made simple, made naked and as unencumbered as flesh?"
"Or perhaps they just don’t fit the narrative I’ve sewn; the narrative which explains why I feel wistful now, why I sigh when I drive past schools, when I remember the specific heat of the California sun on the top of my head, when I cannot access what has already been lived, what has left me, what was but is no longer."
This is brilliant. This is the perfect explication of how memory works. This is childhood. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️