February 2023

I just started working on a new novel called The Mnemosynes. No: the truth is I dreamt of it for years. I only now started assembling its pieces with my fingertips.

I lived with this novel long enough for it to become memory before it mazed and runed rough pages.

But I still don’t understand memory. I’ve studied it in literature. I’ve felt its imprints, the just-slipping-into-sleep of it, during rushed hours. I know it’s married to time. After I explained the working plot of The Mnemosynes, in which plots run forward and backward and implode like stars, a friend remarked, “Since memory is what gives us our sense of time, I think it makes sense that memory might manipulate time somehow.”

Memories are—

Timbered, embered, antlered, torn.

Spring’s blossoms, summer’s haze, autumn’s turns, winter’s rage.

Less terraformed than dreams.

Hugged to one’s chest like a child’s legs, when feeling one’s heartbeat is enough.

Scanned and metered, and even when you smirk at the idea that everyone

stresses the same syllable, you still find their poetry.

Kintsugi-ed

Matryoshka-ed.

All the languages I didn’t let myself know.

The cool stream, ribboned and sheened, in which I dip my toes—but I am upside down.