A41
Collective Memory
Excerpt from novel: A longitudinal case study into motherlessness.

i visited my childhood home,

the one that she had built for us.
i knocked on my front door.
i asked the couple that lived there to let me in
because the house held such
deep-seated meaning for me.
i told them about my mother
and her long-deadness
and what meaning these
walls had held to her,
and, by extension,
to me.

to this man and his wife who lived in my home
i said:
my father was a contractor,
my mother was an architect.
this home was built around me.

they remembered my father and mother,
and so walked me around
to show me what they’d done to it.
my feet guided me across the floors more than my brain.
i didn’t retain a word either of them said.

i stood in my room:
the one she wrote my name on.
it was smaller.
i was older.
she was.
and yet i could feel her
as i walked between her paint strokes
preserved under
several layers of lacquer
(like the rings of a tree)
was the paint she had set.
i put my ear to the wall
to hear her.
i closed my eyes and felt
the walls’ widths from me;
i breathed in the shape.
i considered the location of the closet,
the window,
the distance to the bathroom,
the bookshelf built into the wall.
suddenly i began weeping uncontrollingly and
apologizing unintelligibly.
the woman and her husband consoled me
and asked if i’d like to stay for dinner.
i told them i’d better not stay another minute.
i forgot to ever thank them, and
i don’t remember their names.
they know mine, though;
it’s written on their blueprints.

Samson Manoah