picture by Amy Dover
In that moment of time, where time itself had a different name, named after all the places we have been; and in one instance time was even named after you. We moved back into the old house that we grew up in, displacing our childhood within our minds, even then we contemplated shedding the skin that we had held onto for so long.
I stood in one place for a long time, yet movement was for me somewhat internal, divided by the immensity of what memory cannot recall, and my body felt as though gliding along one of those moving sidewalks that you often see at airports. As a child I avoided getting on that shifting ground that made my stomach cringe as if riding a roller coaster. I wanted only to stay in one place, to be able to ground myself as a tree does, my roots delving deeper into the soil that I first learned to walk upon.
In the beginning, when the last of our belongings were carried out of our home, I remember my mother overworking herself as usual, trying to clean the dust that had settled over 16 years. This was the beginning because I didn't want out our home to be an end, to be placed alongside a punctuatory mark that denoted the last of my mother's tired breath. A small dot that could not be erased. In Japanese, the end of a sentence is marked by a small circle. Encasing emptiness within its constricted space. A line that circles and meets where it began.
Years later, every time I visited Lubbock I would drive by our house. And just before I turned the corner I would hold my breath, unsure if I would start crying or just stay silent and drive slowly as I usually do. All the small changes that I wouldn't even really notice. The color and subtle shape of the bush that aligned the doorway sidewalk. Maybe even the color of the house itself. The window where I snuck out of as a teenager, to stay out late and vandalize public property with spray cans and skateboards.
We didn't really move back into that house. Only I did, secretly, once a month or so within my dreams. A recurring dream with a different narrative. Different characters and different endings. Only the house stayed the same. My subconscious mind constructing dreams out of everything I lived through. Placing pieces on a moving sidewalk, a long extended walkway moving backwards against time, stretching so long that I am unable to see where it all goes to. Yet even standing still at the entrance of my dream, I know that at the end is our home, with my mother busily moving boxes around as usual. But just this once, she is moving them back inside.
