no matter how often I think it, I can't stop loving the first cold slap of water coming through the pipes in winter, the cornhusk smell of heat pressing down on eyelids in summer; on my face, my skin. Windowless nights and how they dress in persistent light— And if I gave up, if I stopped desiring the ordinary things, ordinary rituals we hardly thought about even as we did them— Could I forget, completely? Moths tuck themselves into drawers, where they work out their hidden citzenships in scripts of perforated silver. The taut threads of the hammock loosen; day loses to night, and night again to day, Who was I before the earth shook my world to pieces, before parts of barely formed history were buried along with beams of a house that no longer exists? At the Chinese restaurant they served coffee or service tea in thick white cups, and old men in frayed sweaters hunched eternally over chessboards. Roads wound through mountains but at a certain juncture, one could glimpse the sea. Perhaps I am that house to which I can no longer return. Even now, more than just the stones are forgetting me.
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