Re-imagining

Continuously reconstructing memories through story is continuously re-imagining the ways they affect our lives and worlds. Maybe if we do it enough times we'll start to understand at least some of the past, and at least some of where we go from here. It doesn't have to make sense. We just need to understand, as O'Brien says, with our gut. Communication goes beyond logic and facts.

This is a poem/short fiction I wrote in response to Tim O'Brien's theme about remembering, rehappening, and evoking different responses every time -- maybe even constructing different truths every time.

Reimagining:

She was gone and I didn’t even know her name, and I still don’t. I found out in an e-mail one day when I was taking shelter from too much homework, and I looked at the message and for a moment I was wistful.

Don’t tell me it’s not my story. I remember.

I remember her friend standing beside me on a sunny afternoon, and she was smiling and I was smiling. The wind stirred the grass and we talked about school, and suddenly she was telling me,

“She and I had a joke about hot wings.”

No, wait. I remember. I remember.

Back on that day— the day with too much homework and the bright bar of the message in my inbox, I did know her name — I don’t now, but I did then — her name was in the message, a girl gone a few weeks before summer.

I remember typing that name into a search box and finding a small, short poem about friendship she’d written some day before I knew.

I remember.

I remember typing that name into a search box and finding a small, short poem about the future.

Wait, wait. Listen.

I remember her friend standing beside me and maybe she was smiling but it didn’t reach her eyes, and what she was really telling me was “I miss her” and I couldn’t think of what to tell her back… but

I remember tears and hugging someone clumsily and for a moment the world standing still.

It’s my story, too.

I reimagine.