Pool_2

A utility closet, with ventilation slats, become our womb. Wedged into a V beneath the mop sink, a cot beckoned us. In that glorious dark, embryonic cramp, under the cold plumbing, we slept. Moments only. A precious few fetal minutes there, five, maybe ten, numb to the war, outside the grill. Abrupted unceremoniously, we were born again, pulled breach, back into the wretched reality outside. Now, I tell you these things, as though there were clarity of backward gaze. But that's the lie. There is no clarity. I only remember remembering. I remember each last spoken recollection. An oral tradition of memories retold by generations of myself. I remember a retelling. But reality is that I am blinded with only vague consciousness of older remembrances. I can't see the details. I see nearly nothing and especially I can't see any of the faces.

I can't recapture faces as I look back through my own tunnel of darkened memory. I hear echoes, but through twists and turns of time and fatigue of these eyes, I can't see faces.

I hear echoes. A chief of neurosurgery screaming at me, as though from an audio tape running at half speed, for my meandering clinical notes scribbled drunkenly sliding off the page. I fell asleep in his chair, soothed by the lulling monotony of his impenetrable rant. I slept through his face. Besides, it’s too far back, spattered by his unsympathetic spittle. We were driven by such drivers, those who left us no self initiating aspects of our being.