Memoir

The Rooms That Do Not Remember

It is curious how early we learn to enter a room as if it were a stage.

Not always consciously. Sometimes it is just a small adjustment. The way the shoulders settle before stepping in. The slight pause at the door. As if something within us is arranging itself before we arrive.

The Seats We Don’t Question

It is curious how rarely we question the seats we return to.

Like the way a chair remembers us. The slight dip in the cushion that fits only one body. The way we return to it at the end of a long day without thinking, as though the chair had been waiting, holding the exact shape of our tiredness. There is a quiet relief in sitting down, in not having to adjust, in not having to become anything different from what we already are.

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At 6:30 pm, We Began Again

There is something about twilight that refuses to belong to certainty. It is neither day nor night. It does not announce itself loudly. It arrives quietly, almost like a knowing.

At 6:30 pm on the 26th of March, 1993, we stood in that in-between hour and stepped into a life we did not yet understand. We thought we were beginning a marriage. In truth, something else had begun its work on us.

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