I’m counting the freckles on my skin.
I’m tracing the coffee-splotch birthmark on my stomach.
I’m biting my nails and cracking my knuckles and
thinking about the Old House.

I think it’s sort of funny how in an entire life,
with all its seconds and all its moments, and
all its memories, only some things really stick.

There used to be a time where I prided myself
on my apparently “flawless” memory; I forget
things all the time.  Like
        my mother’s voice
        my father’s face
        my grandmother’s eye color.

I fear that I’ve forgotten the most
important parts of my childhood.

I remember daddy’s race cars,
mommy’s wine, the time my sister
slammed the van door on my head, and the
time I kicked the bathroom entrance.

Last week I opened the photo albums from
under my mother’s bed and I’ve
already forgotten all the things that I
finally figured out that I forgot.  
Sitting on the floor, surrounded by one-hour
Walgreens prints, I started to pick open a
wound that I did not even know was there.

My dog’s ashes are still hidden, a copy
of my mother’s Will is still missing, and last
year my step father found prepackaged
“emergency escape bags” in our basement
along with $250 cash inside the
cogs of our whirlpool.

I’ve heard stories of how my mother
kept documented journals of my father, but I’ve
never had the guts to ask for them.

I’m beginning to wonder what kind of people
my parents really were.  I’m beginning to wonder
just how much of my childhood
I’ve forgotten
                           and how much of it
         I’ve lost.