memory is sewn

ashley with the cornflower blue eyes was telling me of madagascar, a maddening lovely place she'd recently called home away from home. she told of melted down change, tight curfews, multiple tongues and succulent never-before-spied fruits. she told of a woman who's spent the last seven years attempting to adopt a baby found in a garbage can fettered with bushy-tailed feral dogs.

the mom's daughter is seven and still the girl flinches when a dog comes near. the memory has imbedded itself, sinking teeth into her psyche and skin. this memory has become her, continues to create her...

it's memorial day. i left the fuse-in festival expecting to find a bbq with friends. walking to my car along jefferson avenue i passed a carcass of a wheelchair and a man not much livelier sprawled unconscious on the lawn of the coleman a. young federal building. sewn into the backside of his wheelchair were the letters POW MIA.

how memory has become his experience... how memory becomes the way and the who of our experience...