The leaves have just changed colors and there is nostalgia everywhere.

Blankets sprawled along the damp grass, covered in license plates, clocks, leather jackets, cassette tapes, records, books—

And a box, containing a lifespan.

There has to be close to 100 cartons of slide film inside, and one ripped up piece of paper, with vague scribbles of its components.

I scan the images, like a detective looking for evidence of something tangible. Flipping over one box, a smudged black sharpie reads “Dusty Angela.”

Children at a birthday party, a ball pit, her first Christmas, a trip to New York City, a trip somewhere with snow on the mountains, her first puppy, a country music festival, she’s dressed up as Strawberry Shortcake for halloween.

I keep the memories close, so one day when my phone rings and Dusty Angela asks what color she wore to the prom, I’ll tell her she wore purple, and that she looked happy.

The moments begin to fuse into my own childhood memories. When we went to the farm, was she wearing those polka dot overalls, or was that me? Did my father high-five me as I grew 2 more inches and we marked it on the wall, or was Dusty Angela always a little taller than me?

I imagine the day the cardboard box containing her lifespan went missing. Maybe an estate sale, an unexpected death, or simply a choice to leave it all behind?

However it happened, her candy apple memories landed in my lap, and now, they’re landing in yours.

Let’s recognize that I’m preserving something that was never mine, but I find myself in these images. A collective experience of growing, of impermanence, of existence.

Propagating these moments in new soil, I vow to remember, because I am scared that one day my childhood will end up on some blanket at a flea market, buried under an iron from 1980 that they’ll tell you still works if you plug it in just right.

So I leave traces of myself everywhere.

Write my poems on the bathroom stalls and sign my name, tape my photographs to lampposts around the city so everyone has to consider my vantage point, donate my old clothes and find them again at the thrift store just so I know I am still alive.

An act of service, of love, or possibly fear? I’ll store every moment in a neat little box and just keep building more drawers. I’ll be the collector of all things.

So the world will not forget Dusty Angela

and the world will not forget me.

I can’t imagine my body being any smaller than it is right now.

But my mother can.

Often times, I feel her soft gaze lock in and she’ll tell me my mannerisms sparked a flashback to when I was a small child. She says she can picture the moment so clear it’s as if we turned the clocks back and started the growing up all over again.

I find it difficult to wrap my nostalgia around this intricate idea that the little girl she is picturing is in fact, me. I stare at my hands, imagining the fork too big for them to hold, my legs dangling miles above the floor, my hair curlier and my voice squeaky like morning.

Last summer my father planted a fig tree in our backyard. We watched as it grew taller and the leaves started to bud. We plucked a single rotten fig, but he promises next August, we’ll have enough to make jam. As we wrap the tree tightly to protect her from December, I replay the home movie in my head of us shoveling the white driveway. My popsicle body bundled in pink, only frozen lashes and a cherry nose visible. The memory feels clear, but I am indebted to the VHS tape for that.

Often times, I find myself counting the amount of things I’ve watched grow. When Bri was born, I had no idea I was watching the most important part of my life form right before my eyes. But my mother did.

Two Saturday’s ago, Bri asks me if I would carry a baby for her. This was purely hypothetical in a where-do-you-see-yourself-in-this-many-years type of conversation, but before either of took our next blink, I said yes. I can’t imagine my body pregnant-sized, like my mother’s was. But there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for Bri. We’re the only two bodies who hum the tune of the neighborhood icecream truck in the same key, who grieved the same grandfather, who could recall the powdered sugar taste of Christmas morning on Friendly Rd.

But the poem is getting away from me. I caught myself in the middle of remembering — sometimes the lines blur between longing and storytelling.

Often times, I’m not sure if that difference exists, and if it does, I don’t care to find it. If longing and storytelling can Venn-diagram themselves together, can’t bodies and recollection do the same?

Some days my body reminds me it’s still carrying me, and other days I tie a blue string around my index finger so I can recognize it’s mine.

My palms, tripled in size from the memory my mother is flashing back to at the moment, hold on to much more than the handlebars of my aqua bicycle, or my dog-eared copy of Junie B Jones Has a Peep In Her Pocket. They are now sugarcoated in history.

A few Saturday’s later, I’m driving alone upstate. I unwrap my raspberry fig bar and start to hum. The thought comes like a passing pine.

Am I resilient in this body because it is mine or is it because I am a daughter?

I can’t imagine I’ll ever be able to answer this,

But my mother can.

I measure time like I measure ingredients.

And between you and me, I never measure ingredients.

Frankly, I don’t want to wash the measuring cup, but even more frankly, I think my eyeballs have exquisite judgement.

…until the cookies taste like a wave swallowed me whole.

But maybe this was purposeful, because I didn't get enough of the ocean last summer?

I only had bangs until August and I didn't begin grieving until November.

I longed for the summer when my library card married my palms,

When I learned the fifty states song on the way to the sand.

I meant to offer you a sunrise, but instead I asked about movie credits.

Why we stayed in the theater for 7 minutes and read each name like the women were our daughters and the rolling Helvetica was the elementary school playbill.

When the lights came on, I reintroduced my eyeballs to yours

and all of a sudden I was swimming, and you were there, and my body was buoyant and yours was beautiful.

But then we remembered the expiration date on the dark chocolate chips, and we returned home.

We should’ve known that time would slip through our fingers, as the hands of the clock were born without them.

I’ve written that line in a poem before. A poem about the persistence of memory. At the time, I was referring to the painting, but now I refer to the cup of tea that kept me moving.

It’s funny how you made poppy seeds taste like promises, how you made it rain on my birthday.

I wish I could give you a bite of my ocean cookie. Watch as the salt gets stuck in between your molars, as you find yourself chewing on a gritty little bit of my grief.

I think Dali was onto something; all of a sudden the numerals feel distorted.

We should’ve guessed that time would slip through our fingers, as the hands of the clock were born without them.

Jump into the painting with me; and you’ll be standing in a gooey, time soup.

What does time soup taste like, you ask me.

I reply: it tastes like seven birthday candles, it tastes like home, it tastes like goosebumps, it tastes like forgetting.

There is a shoreline that I’ve nicknamed you and I.

A clean hem, an estranged marriage of color and texture.

Unsure of when the boundary became so precise, I dig the soles of my feet into the sand and watch as the grains mold around them.

Tiny specks of golden crumbs, but all I can see is you, and the way your plum-stained lips etched love into my hands.

My body writes itself into a different body, one of water.

A body in which the moon is named mother, and she encourages me to take up so much space, that even Neptune can admire my mesmerizing blue persona.

In this body, I am more alive than I’ve ever been with a heartbeat. The blood pumping to my arteries has been replaced with salt and seaweed, with magnitude and memory.

There is a shoreline that I’ve nicknamed you and I.

A seamstress’ worst nightmare, strands of thread entangled and fraying.

I know now, why we are meant to exist in different hues — why children learn how to draw a horizon line so accurately at a young age.

I’m trying to swim but I succumb to the tide.

There was no other body to hold on to.

The theory of water memory states that when you dissolve a substance in water, it still has the memory of that substance, no matter how many times you dilute the water afterward.

When it rains, and my designated element infiltrates your earth to create mud,

I ask you,

to remember,

me.

Pile so much sugar on top of the truth, that it turns to frosting.

Lick the spoon quickly to hide the evidence.

Paint your body into each time period, so they’ll call you a renaissance woman today and a pioneer tomorrow.

Spin the disco ball 3 times to make all of your wishes come true.

Flip pennies over on the sidewalk so someone else can call themself lucky.

Ask the magic 8ball if you’ll ever have your m&m’s on the piano moment — then

Remind yourself that this is not Genovia and you are nobody’s fucking princess.

Feed the desire with a silver spoon, and bake the apples in existential dread.

Drag the lava lamp out of the closet and teach the mirrors how to cuddle.

Scream your crushes name under water, dress in white lies, jump into the melody headfirst.

Hold hands in the vegetable garden, squash the zucchini, sign your promises with a heart and an expiration date.

Wrestle with words, tongues, and ripe plums.

Don’t let anyone count how many peach pits you’ve spit on the ground since May.

Write the word “no” in that rose-colored diary.

Put a heavy period next to it, write it over and over until it’s the only word you remember how to spell.

Caramelize— like vanilla in August, like bodies on a mattress, like the memory you licked away.

Remember that blood stains, but so do blueberries.

I hope that tomorrow when I go to the market, there will be ripe peaches to pick and the man who sells them won’t call me sweetheart and when I walk home I will be safe and my dog will be happy to see me when I get there and tonight when I cook dinner I will cut up the peach I got from the market and place three slices in a glass of red wine and tomorrow when I wake up and open my yellow journal I will fill the pages with words of worry of anger of fear of wishes for comfort and if the words don’t flow on the pages I’ll pour my peach wine over them and when I walk to get my morning tea I’ll ask the barista for honey, but not before I look over my shoulder three times and try to reassure myself that the man behind me is just inching closer to read the menu but then I’ll look over my shoulder one more time as I grab the honey packet to be sure. When I walk out of the shop and to my right, I’ll make eye contact with the man who sells handbags and he’ll say good morning beautiful and I’ll raise the corners of my mouth slightly so he does not think I’m rude but also does not think I’m flattered and I will increase my pace and remember to make a left instead of a right tomorrow and I’ll take a bite into my peach for comfort but it feels like I’ve swallowed the pit whole and when I find myself back home I’ll turn the key and push the oversized green door inward, crying giant peach juice tears, and I’ll try to catch my breath while jogging up the four flights of stairs and remember that night that I tripped on the seventeenth step because I was too busy looking behind me and forgot to remember I was just fine and when I finally make it inside I’ll sing on the top of my lungs but only after I’ve checked the lock three times and I’ll wrap all of my worry and anger and fear and wishes for comfort in brown paper and place them neatly in a basket to gift to the peach man with dread that tomorrow when I go to the market, he will be there, but with hopes that there will be ripe peaches for me to pick.

The subway doors kiss, and I am jolted out of my daydream.

The woman across from me dressed head to toe in emerald green bounces out of her seat and begins preaching about the power of the universe.

She has hair like my mother, and her perfume has the same notes of amber and forgetfulness. She encourages all of the sad commuters to manifest what they want out loud, and promises their needs will be granted.

The Emerald woman approaches me and takes my hands in hers. A little startled, I adjust my gaze and look into her solar system pupils.

It’s as though I started dialing numbers and the cosmos answered. My mind moves in the same mannerisms as the subway cars; rapid and reckless. The Emerald woman gets off at the Union Square stop and blows me a kiss as the car races away.

Her leafy presence stays with me long after I remove my shoes and turn a few pages in my calendar. She’s drenched me in all of her magic.

But can you manifest magic?

Can you manifest meaning?

Can you manifest a mother?

It’s now a Tuesday in August and the subway car is damp with overheated bodies. It’s the week before my birthday and I’m carrying a bag of groceries that the woman in front of me at the supermarket paid for. I tell her there’s no need, but she tells me I have the same birthmark as her daughter who moved across the country and she misses taking care of someone.

I didn’t get the chance to tell her I missed being taken care of too.

The new year hangs on the wall and I am wearing wool. I celebrate promises, and break three more birthdays.

I’ll never have the answers, or know what it feels like to own a love I don’t have to return.

But I’ll always remember what it feels like to have emerald in my palms.