Tonight, with eyes closed, I am walking into my bedroom in my parents’ house circa 1993, and I am opening one of my bureau drawers. The bureau used to belong to my father’s mother. Nana died in the ’70s. Everything in the bureau is exactly where it was when I put it there. I open the closet doors and there is that dress I’ve been looking for – the first no-sleeve dress I intentionally bought to wear without a jacket or sweater or some cover up in an effort to see myself as others saw me. I have turned to my left and around the corner to view the desk, which has piles of unfinished writings, mail and articles and magazines, as well as a just-shy-of-embarrassing collection of pens and pencils, many of which are no longer functioning. The middle drawer on the left side is slightly ajar.
The bureau no longer exists. The desk – the closet? No longer exist. Who knows what happened to the items in them. The closet clothes? Mostly donated. Nana’s furniture? Tossed.
Nothing in that room exists in that room, because the room no longer exists, because the house no longer exists.
I know where everything exists in a nonexistent place.
Just a Little Jowlier 