Not so much unremembered, as splintered into humid fragments: as in last night’s dream of being taken by the hand and led into a crowded house somewhere in the countryside. Was it some kind of storage shed, or stable? Sacks of grain stacked end to end formed beds, as in a dormitory. Old women spread cotton sheets across them and gestured at what would be my space. The windows had no panes. They looked out over dust-speckled fields, skies the color of soot. You were nowhere to be found. Light bulbs swung from wires in the bathroom stalls. The drains were slow. A child showed me a door that led into a yard. Someone had fixed the rainspout to double as a shower. We tilted our chins up, but only moths swirled out of the shadows, the touch of their wings slighter than drops of rain we were sure would come.
In response to small stone (112).