I don't know if you’ve known anybody that far back; if you’ve loved anybody that long, first as an infant, then as a child, then as a man, you gain a strange perspective on time and human pain and effort. Other people cannot see what I see whenever I look into your father’s face, for behind your father’s face as it is today are all those other faces which were his.

The Italian philosopher Vico had this theory that time moves more in a spiral than it does in a line. He believes that’s why we repeat ourselves, including our tragedies, and that if we are more faithful to this movement, we can move away from the epicenter through distance and time, but we have to confront it every time. I’ve been thinking about trauma—how it’s repetitive, and how we recreate it, and how memory is fashioned by creation. Every time we remember, we create new neurons, which is why memory is so unreliable. I thought, “Well if the Greek root for ‘poet’ is ‘creator,’ then to remember is to create, and, therefore, to remember is to be a poet.” I thought it was so neat. Everyone’s a poet, as long as they remember.

This Much I Do Remember by Billy Collins

It was after dinner.

You were talking to me across the table

about something or other,

a greyhound you had seen that day

or a song you liked,

and I was looking past you

over your bare shoulder

at the three oranges lying

on the kitchen counter

next to the small electric bean grinder,

which was also orange,

and the orange and white cruets for vinegar and oil.

All of which converged

into a random still life,

so fastened together by the hasp of color,

and so fixed behind the animated

foreground of your

talking and smiling,

gesturing and pouring wine,

and the camber of your shoulders

that I could feel it being painted within me,

brushed on the wall of my skull,

while the tone of your voice

lifted and fell in its flight,

and the three oranges

remained fixed on the counter

the way stars are said

to be fixed in the universe.

Then all the moments of the past

began to line up behind that moment

and all the moments to come

assembled in front of it in a long row,

giving me reason to believe

that this was a moment I had rescued

from the millions that rush out of sight

into a darkness behind the eyes.

Even after I have forgotten what year it is,

my middle name,

and the meaning of money,

I will still carry in my pocket

the small coin of that moment,

minted in the kingdom

that we pace through every day.

Happiness is in the quiet,

ordinary things. A table, a

chair, a book with a paper

knife stuck between the

pages. And the petal falling

from the rose, and the light

flickering as we sit silent.