How I Remember

All the things missing, and all the things that never were.
My mother is always surprised at how much I remember.

I remember the puppy at the gas station,
the one that we couldn’t take with us,
because we didn’t know where we were going to live yet;
how I cried in the backseat as we drove away, leaving it behind,
alone in the cardboard box with only a blue blanket for company.
How I sat in that purple-patterned booster seat,
the one I would sit in until I turned 11.

I remember the blue bean,
and the Delaware state quarter my uncle
gave me, as I sat in the front seat,
pretending I was older.
The same uncle who now drives trucks across the country,
and leaves only his old tennis-shoes behind as reminders.

I remember the nook under the stairs
at our new apartment, and the bead curtain I never got.
I remember sitting under it when Raymond came to visit,
and not coming out. But I remember that he winked and smiled
at me, and that changed my mind. He took my mother
on a Ferris wheel, and she liked that, but I wondered why
he never came back. I still wonder if it was me.

I remember all the ones in between, and how they were nothing special.
But I remember most of all how I would look through old pictures
and wonder about the man in them, and where he was now.
He never looked happy, I suppose, except in one.
A picture of three, the way it should be. But these are just photographs.
It’s strange, to feel rejection from a person whose face
is nothing but a photograph in your mind.

It’s funny, though, how I can’t remember him.