Free Form

by Victoria Gioia

There is something freeing about remembering my past self.

My evolved self remembers my dead self with fondness and nostalgia.

I love her. Her attention to detail. Her artistic touch, the way she crafted a scene.

The way she warped the world around her, plucking strings and pulling ropes

to set the stage for her own upbringing.

The way her mind worked like a movie camera. The way she knew, from the beginning,

how she wanted to look back on something as if it were shot on an old cinema reel and recall

lush, soft velvets and the color and scent of pine in her mind’s eyes and ears and nose.

How culture and subculture were reworked and rewrapped and renewed in her hippocampus,

how she saw the 1980s through a movie screen and the 1940s through the radio and thought,

“This takes me back.”

There is something freeing about knowing that her goals were recognized.

Her hard work payed off, her effort was not betrayed.

By the time I see the Golden Gate again, I will have made all her dreams come true.