Parts of the story that I play inside my head are broken, incomplete.
From time to time I take them out, replay them as best I can. Who can say what’s beyond repair? They scare me, the broken bits, but I am curious about them, too.
In one fragment an arm stretches toward me. A sleeve, striped blue and green and gold and ending in a lace cuff; a hand balled into a fist; a finger pointing a sharp nail. Beyond looms a face, erased by rage. In place of features, fire. The flames flare up and screech: “She would hurt my baby! She must be punished!”
That’s all.
It vexes me, not knowing what’s missing. Not knowing where this happens, or when, or whose hand it is, or what leads up to this moment and what follows from it. I think I must have done something very bad. Worse than leaving my mother without farewell. I don’t know whether it would be better to know or not to know.
I cannot help it. I salvage the broken bits. Like letters of an alphabet I am trying to build. Like messages I don’t know how to interpret. I play them forward and in reverse. I rearrange the sequence. I turn them and turn them.
Just because I don’t know what they mean doesn’t mean they’re meaningless.