To Know I Was Beautiful In His

Who Was I, Really? I Was The Sole Occupant Of My Mother's Totalitarian State, My Own Personal History Rewritten To Fit The Story She Was Telling That Day. There Were So Many Missing Pieces. I Was Starting To Find Some Of Them, Working My Way Upriver, Collecting A Secret Cache Of Broken Memories In A Shoebox.

Nobody Had Forgotten Anything Here. In Berlin, You Had To Wrestle With The Past, You Had To Build On The Ruins, Inside Them. It Wasn't Like America Where We Scraped The Earth Clean, Thinking We Could Start Again Every Time.

No Matter Where I Was, My Compass Pointed West. I Would Always Know What Time It Was In California.

The Sound Of Her Laughter Was Sticky As Sap, The Smell Of Night-blooming Jasmine Soft As A Milk Bath.

She Laughed So Easily When She Was Happy. But Also When She Was Sad.