To me, everything has a memory.
Notes, drawings, stuffed animals.
One time my mother held aloft an old sweater that I never favored or disliked,
and she wanted to get rid of it.
‘No,’ I cried, reaching for the worn fabric. ‘I wore that when I was sick!’
Or the countless times my dogs mistook my plush tigers for dog toys,
ripping off the faces and tearing out the stuffing.
I held them in my arms and cried,
mourning the fatal injury to one of many family members.
I tucked them into bed and curled up beside them,
nursing their wounds until they were well enough to join the others.
I sewed buttons in place of eyes and stitched limbs back together.
My mother told me to throw them away, but how could I discard a piece of me?
The other day I found an old drawing,
something terrible, an indistinguishable shape scribbled across the page.
My name was written at the bottom in mismatched, oversized letters.
I put it in my filing cabinet with the rest of my attempted art,
unwilling to scrap what my younger self had called a masterpiece.
Because everything has a memory.
Every drawing copied from a clip of a movie marathon,
every fragile stuffed bear won from the carnival,
every sweater that kept me warm.
To me, they are a timeline.