Childhood memories are lost in a maze that is the brain. A kaleidoscopic filing system where nothing is in order. Not chronologically, not alphabetically, and not prioritized. Some cabinets don’t even open. Keys have been lost for years. And I would imagine that the number for the locksmith is locked in one of those cabinets. Because that just seems to be the way it is.
Images are stretched and skewed and colors are accentuated. Even the lack of color is sometimes emphasized. Pictures are not filed like everything else, they float aimlessly, and as if without gravity, around and around in the cluttered space that I have been enslaved for too long.
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Not all the visions are real. Some are dreams, some memories, some thoughts, and some nightmares. Stumbling upon such a picture in my mind can often take a moment or two for the filing system to pull up archives on it. “Did that happen?” “Did I see her?” “Where was that?” A series of multiple choice questions frantically surveying database after database on a giant server of jumbled information until I can conclude when, why, how, and where that image came from. If it ever even existed at all.
A giant room filled with computers, files, paperwork, paintings, portraits, and digital images flying fast and slow in circles ‘round the room with no set course over the head of a little girl cowering in the corner. Afraid that the things she sees is all a dream, she prays that her photographic memory will not document the events and be kept with her always. Haunting her. What she does not realize; it’s not a dream. It’s her life. She will forever be trapped in what looks like an abandoned classroom. The door slightly ajar, windows broken, and a damp feeling taking over the air.
She does not dare leave. For fear that what lurks beyond that door is far more devastating that the eternity she has already been sentenced in the messy, chaotic, dark room, eternally lonely.
She curls her knees into her chest and fights with all her might to hold back tears.
The little girl deserted in solitude.
