The UnGoogleable World

How your grandmother sashayed into the room when all the family was together.

One pink mitten, greyed from boots and tires, at the intersection of Cherry and Grant streets.

The layer cake of your childhood, in particular how you felt when Heather rolled her eyes at having to include you in her group for the science project on erosion.

How big the sky seemed as you lay on your back in the grass with your friend. Limitless. There was no time.

The wild, and not-so-wild, sexual exploits of your early adulthood. You hope.

The peachy beer scent of the shag rug in your first apartment.

The night you waited for a boyfriend and saw that there was a man watching you from the bushes, his eyes like fire darts.

Any evidence that you ever had a bad haircut. Not really. Sorry. That’s out there.

The menu from your engagement dinner.

Stories the dying shared with you from their beds at home, or in the nursing home with the pastel artwork of empty chairs.

All live performances, seen live, and the way you rolled up the playbill, and kept it for awhile in your desk drawer with all the other programs.

Rows of typewriters at the shop on Main Street in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where two older men repair and sell, and know everything there is to know about platen rollers.

Every cootie catcher you folded with your daughter, laughing at the chance silliness inside them, every origami boat.

The callus you developed on your middle finger from holding the pen like a vice. It is a vice.

Indigo inhale of a newly mimeographed sheet of paper.

Cut to the scene where your husband helps your mother step up to the casket of her favorite uncle so she can place the carnation and say one last goodbye.

The center of the dream you had where you reached the top of the ladder made of pipe, and the wind you felt as you shifted all of your weight to reach the door.

All those backyard circuses with your sister and the neighbors.

The old neighbors you can’t name, you only recall their striped shirts or arrows of blonde hair.

That five year diary with the gold stamped cover you wrote in for three days, and then lost the flimsy key.

The snowflake hiccups of your daughter in utero.

The unfolding expanse of the lake bottom you walked around in as a kid, uprooted trees like Dostoevsky's gnarled fists.

Rat scuttle sounds from the curtains of the movie theatre.

The lost submarine feeling of all that vodka that one time.

Apologies whispered to the love of your life.

Your father’s laughter. The way he would put his hand on his chest when it was a really good laugh, and his eyes would water.

The blackened thumb of the snowman mitten you sucked on your way to Kindergarten.

That feeling you get when you know you’re leaving something out, all that matters, but you stop anyway because nothing goes on forever.

Dostoyevsky’s hands. Not available in closeup after an image search. Lucky him.