What am I up to? Not as you think, not readying for guests, grading, research, those yes, but the sweet blue cotton print dress with tiny lavender flowers and gingham trim disappeared! I am looking for it! I look for it between hangers, between stacks in storage bins, in drawers among towels and sheets, sweaters, I slipped it on only weeks ago when the spring was yet too cold to wear it, and hung it back up with the pink strap dress and the brown linen one covered in red umbrellas. I did.
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Then just now behind the spare bed linens in the closet drawer: soft blue crumpled thing. It's dark in the back of the closet and you must push through the clothes on the racks and crouch beneath them to pull out the linen drawers which I must've done in the last few weeks--I don't remember--when the dress got put there too. My memory deludes me in other ways. The flowers are pink, the cut is all wrong. I am almost disappointed.
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And I think: how can you live this way? With this memory that makes things up when things are lost?
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They made it. They're here.
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