Spout-like hairs. Anemic skin. Flat blue eyes. Today I saw myself. I forgot who I was. I forget who I am. I forgot who I wanted to be. 

I step through the cellar door, landing in the wolds I created. By living. I read my incongruous handwriting. I listen to my various hued scrawls—they are telling me stories. My stories. 

Ebbing and flowing. My life. Like sand. Turbulent waves kick kick kick. Pitch me onto the beach. Rip me back into the current. Again again again. 

I am in Trinidad. Humboldt County. I am planting poppies with my mother. I am in Dublin, drowning in the emerald sea. I am at Burning Man, filling my camelback with vodka.

I am 18. I am on 280. I am on 92. I am driving to the sea. I am pulling into my grandmother’s driveway. I inhale salty, ocean air—the scent of my mother. 

I'm 17. I am at Sunnyvale 1 Hour Photo, pulling photos from the minilab. Windows are shattering, blasting me with tiny slivers of glass. 

I'm still shaking, but the earth is not. I  reach into my pocket and grip my keys. My blue Chevy Nova, which is eerily intact. Through the war zone I fight my home. Then—Cupertino. Home. I find my mother, perched on a sofa that is blanketed in broken pieces of our life.

I'm  17.5. I am told my mother's brain surgery went very well. 

I'm 19.  Jay is holding my hand. We are boarding a plane to Dublin.

 I'm 21. I'm alone, boarding a plane for Prague.

I'm 22.  Jay is holding my hand. We are boarding a plane to our honeymoon—Kauai.

I'm 42. I have landed in the future. My world—this world—is in a forgotten universe. 

I'm 36. Holding my newborn son. My kid has my eyes. I got my kid’s teddy bear. He is 5 years old. He is 18 years old.