We don’t remember being born because the mind was still a house without walls—just wind, sensation, and ancestral breath. Memory needed language to anchor itself, and we hadn’t yet learned the names of things. So our first moments slipped into myth, carried by others who witnessed us before we could witness ourselves.
But then, one day, a wall formed. Thin, translucent. I remember kneeling beside my cousin Joy, both of us pressed against the bed, watching my newborn sister Cheryl swaddled in quiet mystery. My mother stepped away to fetch something, and for a moment, the room held only us—two children witnessing the arrival of someone new. That memory stayed because it had shape: names, relationships, the rhythm of a home rearranging itself.
After that, the walls of memory rose slowly. Built from repetition, from the scent of my mother’s skin, from the way Joy said my name. Memory became a house with rooms—some lit, some locked, some echoing with voices I no longer hear but still feel.
-me
currently listening to Family, by The RH Factor
