Past Away
Hannah Mendro
There’s a quality
to childhood memories, a sort of blurred-around-the
like dust in the back of your mouth, as though you li
of the old scrapbook and had to wipe away the years
over pictures too unfamiliar to be real.
There are sensations
I don’t quite remember: the exact texture of my old
or the old-closet smell when I buried my face in her
it existed, but I don’t remember what it felt like.
Then there are some
that jump out immediately: the sweet not-fruit-not-flo
I had forgotten existed until my mother abruptly bou
and I became four years old again, unwilling prisone
as she lathered the top of my head and tried not to d
the rug against my cheek, curled on my side in the c
under the desk, warm sound of the roaring heater I
no madeleine cookies for me, but the sight
of the black glass stones my brother and I prized: un
until you held them to the light; then they glowed
green or purple, and we fought over who got the purp
I walk past my mother’s old house sometimes:
less and less now, as I build new nests, shed years a
but sometimes I pass it by, the old loop
still familiar to my feet even if the sights
don’t make sense anymore.
They’ve changed it, the new residents: painted
the door red, put out a new mailbox in the front;
tamed the wilderness of our “patio” back into a driv
They’ve undone all the changes
I protested against at first: I remember
my eight-year-old indignation at the painting of the b
tears at five over the loss of the old mailbox I now ba
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