recovered · partial · uncertain
a room with _________ tiles and a window onto a courtyard that _________________
someone laughing at a thing you said. you cannot recall the thing or the someone.
smell of wet paper. a magazine left in the rain. a phone number that no longer connects.
the corridor ran the entire length of the building. you walked it every day. you cannot picture it now.
three notes on a piano. the same three. you cannot place them, only their silence between.
your name on a piece of paper. someone else's handwriting.
a face turning away. __________ never turning back. _______________________
an entire summer reduced to one overheard sentence.
it was raining when you left the building. or you imagined it was raining. or it has only ever rained in the image you
these fragments are stored elsewhere — in forget, in the library,
in naturata, in the eye that watched.
what you cannot recover is not gone. it has only become quiet.