outside a store in a mall ther were big ABC letters we could crawl in. maybe it was The Children's Place.

you wrote a thing today. or yesterday. i guess technically it was the day before yesterday.

doesn't matter. i didn't really understand it, so i felt tempted to leave some weakly linked comment about how she's the prettiest of all the wives and i've been having fantasies about her lately that are making me question my sexuality, which i don't norma-- i mean sexual orientation.

sometimes you kind of find your way around and then i confuse the real you with the you i've created. i think you are this listener, so i want to tell you things, and in the dream of it, you understand. there's this way you bring things out of me.

you know what fresca is? the soda? i like it. i've always liked it. there are a few things i remember ever eating when i was in new york and those things include:

shishkebab, hot dogs, yoohoo, italian salad dressing, butter, stove top stuffing, seltzer, wonton soup, lo mien, happy meals, frosties, cheerios, yogurt (strawberry, vanilla, and peach--real fruit on the bottom), coke, apple juice, bologna, cheese, apple sauce, rye bread, spaghettios (or ABC's, or the carnival ones), these baby cookies, chocolate (valentines day and easter), pudding, yellow rice, orange juice, lima beans, oatmeal, pancakes, french toast, (crunchy) peanut butter and jelly, kielbasa, grilled cheese, salsa, chicken noodle soup, cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, black olives, bugles (ha),  breaded and fried chicken breast, macaroni and cheese. ice cream, ice cream cake.

most of these foods are "comfort" foods now. i don't eat bologna anymore. i know it's stupid, but to make a list like that, when i picture the apartment. when i moved here at four, i tried to commit the whole thing to a permanent memory. now its fragmented, like, pieces hanging by strings with, space between them, and sometimes i am confused with the house of our neighbors on the first floor.

certain toys may have been ours, or theirs. probably it sounds really crazy, and you'll think i'm overly sentimental, but sometimes i try to remember little details. and the older i get, the less i remember, sometimes it's just the memory of remembering, or trying to remember.

but i know i wasn't afraid of my mother. i loved her. i don't remember her ever hurting me. there's only one story where she did, i bit my brother, she might've smacked me or yelled at me, but i don't really remember. i know i used to have a memory of it, but i've heard the story so many times, it's taken the place of the memory itself. i was very young, and, language wasn't the primary medium for memory like it seems to be now. all of it now is just a couple of days, but when i left, i knew it'd been my entire life.

a lot of different events bleed together. i have a memory i can't seperate easter from my birthday, for instance. i slept a lot. my mother used to put a washcloth on my head to wake me for dinner, i hated that. i hated having to eat dinner when i was so sleepy.

after we moved. it was right around today, sixteen years ago. maybe the 13th or 14th. everything was different. just pain, i don't remember ever feeling safe or loved. mom "started" smoking, and she got a perm, and it was different after that. sometimes there were moments, you know, where i was crying or something from being scared, and she'd hold me, and things were ok.

progressively, those moments diminished into a contented, constant discomfort, though she's rarely abusive like she used to be.

and i guess what i thought was a fear of losing the oppertunity to feel that safety again really isn't. i don't have any hope that the moments of pure love could return even if she could get better. it'd probably always be like this, because, i don't know how they can't be mutually exclusive. to have one is to lose the other forever.

but, to think back before the real subtleties of language, in more simplistic toddler brain, to think about yellow rice, or wonton soup, or watching Wizard of Oz, or the bed sheets that had little puppets sewed on them, the still life painting on the wall, shiny time station, carnival shaped pasta, the wooden owl, that gigantic pair of dungarees outside some store, then i remember what that felt like. to be a child with a mother.

and i'm afraid i will loose these memories. i don't know that it's something i can help, because i remember in my new house, struggling to know the old one forever, and i don't really, anymore. and then what if, the feeling goes away, too, and then i don't remember my mommy, or feeling attached to her the way animals are. what if, in ten or twenty years, in sixteen years, i can only remember the words of the stories, the memories are replaced by memories of memories? what if i can't feel like i ever had a mother, only know that once i did.

Reviews

[DBKaine]

I found this slightly confusing and the grammar needs work, but at the end of the day its a self expression of emotions and such. I think if you skim over this it will confuse you, but if you take the time to read its contents properly its actually quite a good read. Well done x