I can’t remember her name. I can’t remember it. I knew it yesterday. I knew it every day since she was born warm. But right now, naked in the sky, I can’t remember her name.
Gustav says we’ll land in five minutes and neither he nor Patricia seems particularly bothered that I can’t remember my own sister’s name. Unlike all five minutes that came before it, this one is unfathomably short. I can see our oval-shaped neighborhood. The tops of the fifteen-year-old trees. The playground. The parallel road. Las Hermanas. Gustav’s backyard. And in the distance, I can see my house, brown siding and bilevel.
We descend.
We descend.
We descend.
And the bush man runs toward us. And Gustav’s father opens the garage door. And his mother holds a tray of home-baked cookies. And suddenly I remember that we’re all naked.
And I can’t remember her name.
The scar can’t remember her name.
No one remembers her name.
She was the kid who didn’t know what a wombat was. She was exceptional at geography. She liked rhyming. She talked too loud. She had temper tantrums when she had to go to bed. She will never kiss the bush man. She will never go to a dance. She will never watch M*A*S*H with me while we eat frozen dinners. I will never tell her that Hawkeye Pierce is our mother. She will never cry out my name at night and set up her sleeping bag on my bedroom floor.
We land and the grass doesn’t know her name. The dirt. The dandelion blooms. None of them know her name.
I don’t know what comes after this.
I don’t know what comes after this.
Reset. Reset. Reset.