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Lessons in Memorization - Greta Gordon 

Lessons in Memorization 

 

When I was small,

I never thought

I would notice the smell of my house when

I got home after months away,

I assumed without assumption that everything

I knew was a given, so

I never memorized any of it.

 

Nights in infinite sea and sky-borne adventures,

waking with the powder freshness of my mother’s hand,

then her shoulder,

then her temple,

then above the greys sprouting

like dandelions in her hair’s field, not a bit like weeds.

 

Then the shutters were painted coal gray,

just a small difference,

just different enough to notice if you’ve lived your life behind them,

just different enough to notice that

 

Maybe you should have noticed the hairline cracks in the paint that

maybe crackled like the lightning bolt whispered to have struck my senior English teacher, or

maybe split the painted wood like the greys that split my mother’s painted hair, or

maybe chipped off entirely like Mrs. Mannon’s discarded engagement ring when the little boy clinked it with a rock to test its fidelity to its image, more faithful than the fidelity it symbolized,

 

And I am too tall to notice my mother’s scent in waking, only when I am 4ft tall in sleep,

and instead I smell the cheap musk the boy down the hall dabs on his too-red neck after showers,

and I have too good a view of the silver grandfather clock hands on my mother’s scalp,

and my nights are spent trying to remember the givens that no longer are,

and I try to trace the neglected shrubs I never bothered to memorize.

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