The Street That Forces You to Remember or It Erases You Completely

0:00President Barack Obama. Virginia, we are counting on you. Republicans want to steal enough seats in Congress to raid the next election and wield unchecked power for two more years. But you can stop them by voting yes by April 21st. Help put our elections back on a level playing field and let voters decide not politicians. Vote yes by April 21st. Paid for by Virginians for fair elections. Liberty Mutual customizes your car and home insurance. But now we're customizing this ad for your morning commute to wake you up. Which could help your driving? Science says that stimulating the brain increases alertness. So here's a pop quiz. How many months have 28 days? What gets wetter as it dries? What is keys but can't open locks? If you don't want to hear the answers, turn off this Liberty Mutual ad now. 12 months, a towel, piano. Enjoy being fully alert. Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty

1:05Hello, I'm Wolken. Stories all the time. The lad you are here. Let's get into it. Midnight and something is knocking, delicate and assistant, not at the windows where the wind sometimes flutters the loose green, but at the front door, just below the old horse who pitted with us. Our live very still, she's drawn high. Scout snaps a week beside me, his six paws touching as he loaches up with the church mouse whine, then full silent, here is Ramrod. My first thought clear and urgent, not a neighbor, not at this hour. Second thought, just as quick, would a neighbor even knock or just text, like anyone decent. I fumble slippers onto my shaking feet moving by habit, not reason. Every sound brims, my pulse scouts claws and the rug, the waffling of his nose at the bedroom door. I move down the hall, hot thumping behind my hands. Through the glass panels of the front door, the street is almost brighter than day, moonlit and perfectly silent. Not a single house light, not even the trundle of a late delivery truck. Parkwood lane looks waxy, like a model town or a memory made too smooth. I unlock the door. On the step, silver light chivas. A figure blows at the corner just a flicker,

2:08impossibly toll and naturally thin. No back, no sound, no co-gliding off. Only the tail of a coat twitching around the knees, vanishing behind ms. Estilani's juniper hedge. Their weight's a single envelope, square and glossy, is a polished knife, glinting at my feet. Sylvia and Scripps so fine it trumbles. The card is cold far colder than the warm muggier. It sticks to my skin as if I'd found it in a freezer, for an instant. I wonder if this is some daft prank, a schoolgirl curse, a teen scavenger hunt. But the paper feels expensive, aged, fragile at the corners, a softness that might market as much older than whatever my neighbors would leave behind. A sweet, spicy centrapping paper, candle wax, all sweets rises as I carry it inside, scout trailing after me with hackles up. My breath fogs the whole ways if it's 10 degrees lower by the front door, each inhalation making the envelope shimmer. I hesitate before the trembling brass lamp, then peel open the flap. Inside, a single, cream-colored note, mindfully crumpled, and a list pen in two colors of ink six names, one for line. Frank Delaney, Hal swan, Grace Chu, my fink, Esther Heller, Sylvia Rodgers,

3:15underneath my name, scrolled darker than the rest, remember. I feel the center's curl under my skin. Remember what? I can't recall ever receiving anything like this before at least, not since I was a girl, when neighbors might still bring cars or a clumsy gate drowned in icing. Stat wines throwing me out of whatever days I'm in. I took the envelope under a book in the hall table, determined that tomorrow I'll walk the street, confront a neighbor, and get the answer. But even as I pressed the switch to flood the hole with light, the shadow is seen pressed up against the wall, making the gold frame on my wedding photo gleam a bit too brightly, turning the reflection of my own face into something I have recognized and have dread. The house breeze quietly around me, I sit with the envelope still inside my fist. That's when the memories start, chilly winter mornings, the bitterness of disappointment, birthday hats and rows of little cakes. There's an ache behind my ribs, something out to remember but cannot pin down. Scout yarns body releasing its tension now that the door is locked, but I don't move. It's the old feeling from years ago when the ear was thick with wishes you'd better not voice, when a knock at the door meant someone had seen you, truly seen you, and you didn't know if you wanted to be seen at all. In the early iris,

4:18the street outside remains silent, holding its membrane breath. I finally get back into bed, bearing the silver envelope at the bottom of the laundry basket. Sleep comes sticky and filled with colors I don't recognise. To honorise great and reluctant. By then, I've convinced myself it was only a trick the insomnia talking, surely. Park with Lynn always feels brittle and spring, with dogwood petals slick underfoot and the big maple hanging onto the last of their leaves. The air has a feeling of being stirred up, not quite new, not quite spent. Scout on a go for a walk in the sticky half light. He goes slower these days, his gates slightly stiff, smelling everything and nothing at once. The neighbor's house is common to being with every step clumps of Fercithia beneath Mrs. Delaney's porch. The squat blue bins the Sloan's keep perfectly lined along the drive, the wind chimes on the shoes you've never quite tuned, baby socks hung out to dry in nets. The street is both intimate and distant, old hedges block casual view, but everyone knows who belongs and who is late with their trash. Children chase each other around crumbling garden numb next door tiny shrieks soon admonish from open kitchen windows. I keep mostly to myself on park with Lynn. People know me as quiet

5:22Sylvia, the widow in the green house. Not unfriendly, not eccentric enough to draw stares. Scout is old enough now that even the kids don't ask to pet him just a polite wave, maybe a hello from I, half hidden by her chip purple helmet skateboard tucked under her arm. Life accumulates around these placid, crumbling houses. I keep a loose schedule, Mondays washing, Tuesday's grocery, Friday's tending to the tangle of lilac in the backyard. My contacts with the neighbors are echoes exchanges of leftovers, the occasional invitation to water plants when someone goes on vacation. Genuine affection, perhaps, but nothing vital. I stop holding scout to a heel as recessed a lady bends over her resaleas, bright gloves flushing. She straightens hair in a messy gray knot. Morning, she calls, force pitch for the next few houses to hear. She doesn't notice me glancing at her stoop at the shape nestled in the shadow. There, unmistakably, and not a silver envelope. I glance around. Pulse low and hurrying by with his sun-soaked bag, he's the sole to always, that's like he's late even if he's not a stop to peer at the envelope on his dupe. He bends frowns, flicks nervous eyes up and down the street.

6:23Scout tugs me armoured, but a slow at each house. Not every door bears that strange glint, but enough to you to make my hands sweat. Back inside, I flick through the photo albums I keep in the bottom for a solitary habit, but one that comforts in a big way. There are the usual things, birthday kick with army men sunk deep in blue frosting, scout as a young dog snatching presents, stiff family photos from the days before Eric died. In one of them, a picnic in the neighbors' yard I stop. Someone, the face turned away, holds up a silver envelope, arm outstretched. The edges of the photo are faded, beautifully so, but the envelope is sharp as a sliver. I shut the album. Ansons. Just a trick of the camera. Maybe an invitation, a fancy birthday card. I range the living room fluffing pillows already stiff from over use and try to focus on making coffee, but I end up back at the window every few minutes, watching for movement. The sky is the wrong shade of blue. The neighbor who feels as if it's caught in a still frame, not quite right, not quite wrong. The envelope from last night's sets beneath the pile of socks in the laundry basket. I keep feeling the tug to fetch it to read the names again. Instead, I scoop it up along with my

7:27reusable bag and head out onto the porch, fainting purpose. There are all out, or nearly all the silver envelopes. Each one alike, but each left just so in a place of prominence. On the Sloan's brick steps, on the shoes peeling mailbox, on Mr. Heller's sagging porch swing. For the first time in years, across the street in bed and hand raised in greeting. Mrs. Delaney straightens, dusting off the knees of her pants. Lovely day, isn't it? She looks tired, skinless around her jaw, but an envelope sits an open behind her on the old porch rocker. Did you get one too? I ask as causally as you can at this hour before coffee. She's slow to answer, hands locking on her puner. Bell, every year, dear, always custom. Her eyes flick away. Can't remember when it started, you know, one of those foolish things that catch on and won't die. She laughs, falls and shrill enough that even her dogs snorts. Paul catching the conversation, coughs to these I've never seen one, not like this. He holds his envelope as if it's about to burn him. It wasn't here yesterday. His handshake is weak

8:28clammy. He keeps glancing back at his door, where his son is framed by the screen, hands pressed to the mesh. My rolls up board balance with practices. She's got the fly we are only new kids have and so did the hierarchy. We just moved here in September, she says. My mom says it's some old lady tradition, but she's never seen it. I think it's weird. She gives me a side-on look, you part of this too. We're just a curious bystander. At the community garden, two pensioners bicker about mosquito netting, then hush. Lips pressed in when I president Barack Obama. Virginia, we are counting on you. Republicans want to steal enough seats in Congress to raid the next election and wield unchecked power for two more years, but you can stop them by voting yes by April 21st. Help put our elections back on a level playing field and let voters decide not politicians. Vote yes by April 21st. Paid for by Virginians for fair elections. Liberty Mutual customizes your

9:29car and home insurance, but now we're customizing this ad for your morning commute to wake you up, which could help your driving. Science says that stimulating the brain increases alertness. So here's a pop quiz. How many months have 28 days? What gets wetter as it dries? What is this case but can't open locks? If you don't want to hear the answers, turn off this Liberty Mutual ad now. 12 months, a towel, piano. Enjoy being fully alert. Liberty, Liberty, Liberty, Liberty, Liberty. Perch. Silver glints from their market basket. The woman the taller one may be recessed low grips or envelope so tight it works. Just something the lane does, dare, you'll see. Some reactions are hunger disguised as decorum others tuck the envelope into pockets, fingers trembling as if they are holding something they've forgotten and desperately want to remember. Paul tries to make a Joker birthday, unbirthday, whatever keeps the lawn safe, right, but there's no real mirrored and his boy watches him with grave animal eyes from behind a glass. Mr. Heller is running his hose over the crack walk, muttering. I venture a question.

10:31He gives me a look equal parts contempt and fear. Best not to ignore the list, he whispers. You could forget more than you think. I want to tell him I haven't the faintest idea what I'm to remember, but his door closes soft as a sigh before I get another word in. Back at home, I lay the envelope on the kitchen table, flattening it smooth, shaking my head of the names, the instruction. Remember, I'm mortar. Remember what? The next day, I try another approach. I visit each neighbour on the list, scooping up small, wrap all gifts from under my bed and from shops up the road. From assist to lane it scoff in a shade I think might match her coat. For Mr. Heller, a 1000 piece puzzle with birds. For Paul, a rubber ball for his dog they don't have a dog, but what else would you give the father? At Grace Chew's house, I stand twisting the ribbon in the paper wrap box in my hands. You shouldn't have, she whispers when she answers the door, voiced in as newsprint. But she clutches the gift close as watered with surprise or fear. I stammer in apology, but she just nods and closes the door, leaving me in the steps. Later, I jot down every birthday I can recall, noting a pattern all grouped too neatly,

11:34all within the same four weeks far too many to be chants. It feels like a trick and overlaying of birthdays. Each day a new envelope appears on the nut of stoop. When I ask about it and so slip away like soap. At the curb, I watch my knock awkward, scuffs sneakers towing the walk out the house where she's never been. She shoves a clumsily wrap mug into Mrs. Lois' hand, muttering something past her teeth. Later, I see her slumped on her porch, humming smiling for the first time in weeks as if a boat had shifted. Paul is in his own world, buying a board game I doubt his some wants. The next morning, the house is quiet for once, his both sleeping late, Paul's face brighter as if unburdened by weeks of insomnia. Becest a lazy chats with me in the street. He always picks such thoughtful things, Sylvia, every year, I think you know just what I need. I say nothing, smile, because I don't remember ever giving her anything before. All the wilds get drags me away from silver envelopes. He will not go near them, pulling at the leash until the envelope is out of sight. Dogs, I suppose, have their own wisdom. I experiment, I throw myself a envelope in the trash while making an armoured. By sundown, my house thickens with the waxy

12:39heat as smell like a hundred melting candles. It's almost hard to breathe. I rush from room to room, chase him the source, until I find the envelope pristine sitting square in the middle of my bed. My name black and undeniable. I hear that Mrs. Loan from two Joes down refused his envelope altogether. The next morning, he's seen stumbling the lane, robust queue, muttering it's not my birthday, not my name until his wife leaves him back inside. The Donald children stare at the side work trying hard not to nervous. The children who just speak of it only make it stranger, the list keeps people safe. Warm says it's just a rule. Other scene to remember details that do not fit. A girl at the corner tells me, last year you gave me a kite, wasn't a pink. But I have no memory and a photo from that day plastic tablecloth. Party hats shows the child opening something entirely different. No one seems eager to explain, not really. More than anything, they look relieved to see the gifts arrived to tuck the crumple tissue into the trash, breathe again. My own memories get slippery. I recall a party sun slicing through the pines, laughter at the scent of lemon cake,

13:40that the faces are wrong, blurred, and in the memory I'm watching myself from a drift away, like a film, not a participant. One evening, at Mrs. Choose Birthday, things tip further off guilt her. Grace opens a gift of scoff, I think can frowns. This isn't right, she hisses, foys sharpen urgent. She shoves it away, the circle of friends freezing around her. The gift lands on the floor. No one moves. Next day, someone tells me, Mrs. Choose found an ebber's lost cat, cold and hungry, as if it were to frighten what should not have gone wrong. My own house becomes complicit. I open cupboards to find gifts wrapped in silver, each labeled in my hand, all things I don't recall buying. I try burning one in the sink minutes later, a new one appears in the laundry basket under Scouts' towel. The mirrors become suspect, sometimes I see movement shadows within them, and once, a glimpse myself setting down an envelope on the whole table while simultaneously lying in bed. Neighbors shift even the ones I thought I knew. Conversations end abruptly when I walk up. Someone watches me behind crocheted curtains, phone raised as if to text, but never clicking a picture. Mrs. Choose, usually so godly, says only, it used to be fairer, once, now it keeps

14:45cruel. I ask what she means, but she goes pale and silent, mummling to her knitting. Photos in my albums rearrange overnight. A birthday table that was bare yesterday holds a mountain of gifts the next morning, and my mother's handwriting is on the cart, though she's been dead for 20 years. Some nights, I find confetti in the bathtub, a smear of frosting on the wardrobe's top shelf. Birthday songs float down the lane after midnight eerie and wordless, sung by no voice I recognise. I start charts, circle birthdays, cross-reference lists as best I can. The more I try, the more my name crops up always, every year, and every neighbor's envelope in different positions, like a fatal link. Yet I only remember a handful of these alleged potters, only ever receiving one or two gifts. I force myself to tackle the history head-on. At the library, the stacks are all day unhelpful searching park with lane in the city register brings up a different name, Sherrod Avenue. There's a faded newspaper clipping, curling with age and damp. The headline is little more than a ghost of local tradition after tragedy. Details bleed and blend, an accident. A child missing? The rest is water stains munch.

15:47It's enough to make me shiver. One house on the lane, always avoided, sits at the dead end, the McCree place, poured it, the outer climbed by vines. Its porch sags, its lead is faded. I've never seen a silver envelope there. Beyond the gate, no tracks lead in or out. On a deer when the wind screams through the pines, I duck under the drooping caution tape on the McCree porch. The male slot is jammed with brittle flyers. I brace myself pushing the side window. Before he is unchanged from years of neglect, dust on dust, the air pack tight. The only sign of life is a pile in the corner washed out white repeated chopped gleams of silver. I crouched hand-shaking as I pick up one. Each envelope bears my name in the looping script, but not Rogers. My childhood name, Sylvia Sanster, spells childishly across the paper. I flip them open, one after another. The handwriting is mine, from years ago I recognize the shaky, oversized asses. They are all lists. Some decorative with smiley faces or hearts, each repeating the same handful of names, the same admonitions, remember. Don't forget. Yes, over and over. I stagger to my feet the air in the abandoned house

16:52is syrupate resistant. I almost drop the whole bundle when something stows at the end of the hole the shadow from that first night, shape half assemble from coat, scarf, hat, and something terribly, rationally long-handed. It is not a person, but the memory of a person. They splank, but impossibly disengly familiar. In the hand, an envelope silver, pristine, my maiden name written with a curl, as if to a small child on her birthday. I tried to form words, but my tongue is too cold. The thing approaches, silent as paper folding. It hauls out the envelope, and I take it because I can do nothing else. Last flicker, not only in the house, but across the whole block I see it through the dusty windows, thant and shuddering porch-pobts die. The air pulls tight, sharpen chill. I ripped the flap open with shaking fingers. Inside, only another slip of card edges press nearly through. The handwriting even shake here, but not mine of reads. You always forget, but you always return. As I look up, the shadow is gone. The air is cold as January. I stand, ankle-deep in envelopes, unable to remember climbing the porch steps. My name echoes in my head, remember.

17:54Remember. Remember. President Barack Obama. Virginia, we are counting on you. Republicans want to steal enough seats in Congress to raid the next election and wield unchecked power for two more years, but you can stop them by voting yes by April 21st. Help put our elections back on a level playing field and let voters decide not politicians. Vote yes by April 21st. Paid for by Virginians for fair elections. Liberty Mutual customizes your car and home insurance, but now we're customizing this ad for your morning commute to wake you up. Which could help your driving? Science says that stimulating the brain increases alertness. So here's a pop quiz. How many months have 28 days? What gets wetter as it dries? What is keys but can't open locks? If you don't want to hear the answers, turn off this Liberty Mutual ad now. 12 months at towel. Piano. Enjoy being fully alert. Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty

18:56The moon is bright over Parkwood Lane. The neighborhood holds its breath. The moon is bright over Parkwood Lane. The neighborhood holds its breath. Scout is waiting at the corner of the block, least trailing and tail limp. I have no memory of letting him out. He looks up at me half hopeful that this walk will restore order to things. In my face, the envelopes paper age grows softer each minute as if it's growing warm from being held. I first know I don't think that way. Not that first. Everything now is half known or already repeating, like I'm trapped in a template that keeps revising itself. Dog, leash, street, silver. Come on, I whisper, still sounding like myself in my own ears. Scout has tits always the braver between us, but worry this night and then pads close, never looking directly at the McCree house as we pass. In the moonlight, the block's children's bicycles lay on their sides in one neighbor's yard, wheels spinning as if someone just lit gore. A plastic beach bowl rests on wet grass, stenciled with faded smiles. The wind smells of spoiled cake and melting wax. No footsets behind a snow movement,

19:57although when I pass the Delaney house, Miss Estolani's porch light pops on, then off. I risk a look, the silver envelope is gone from her rocker replaced by a stack of gift bags tied with curling ribbon. I see her silhouette in the window, back hunched as she purses her hands together as if in prayer or supplication. I weave home for shadows, scouts nails pattern urgently, my own heart working overtime. My front walk cleans clean in the silver dock, but my mind wants to snag on the corners of things shutto left open, mailbox a jar, winch I'm oddly silent. No envelope on my stupor I left none, but as I close the door, my phone lights up with a single message. A number I don't know, all zeroes. Thank you, Sylvia. Remember, I drop the phone, heart convulsing. The message won't delete, even as I swipe and swipe. It sits in my inbox, a text so pale at belly results. I lock the doors, windows, even the mailbox, as if a thin pane of glass could undo whatever is closing over park with lane. I hide the fresh envelope from the McCree house under the sink, behind a box of scouts warm bells, then retreat to the living room and sit,

20:57blanket wrapped tight, staring at the darkness that never gets entirely dark. Sleep refuses to come. Each time I close my eyes, I see the shape behind the door long arms, dragging something that looks like an empty balloon or a torn banner, something that used to be festive and is now only hollow. I try to think about the pattern, the names the repeats. My own name reappearing every year. Since I was a child. But when? The birthdays I remember are bland, nothing more. The things I forgot seemed to circle me now, eager to be acknowledged. Sometime near dawn, I hear muffled singing from somewhere on the block low of key, a child's voice stripped of words. Scouts stirers under the couch uneasy. When sunlight finally peels back the edges of the windows, it's the coldest morning in weeks. Everything outside has the look of a film strip pours too long, condensation beaded in the plastic swing set, the neighbor sheets sagging against the grass, as if no one's been out to rescue them for eyes. At breakfast, I find two wrap boxes placed beside the toaster. One is labeled a delivery Delaney. The other, two heller enjoy. My handwriting, but none of my memory. I am wrap a corner of the Delaney

22:02box and find a bottle of vanilla essence just where she swears by for her cakes. The canchy only likes when the specialty shop free towns over. I have no recollection of ever shopping there. Scouts noses the box, huffs once, then lines. Out of our hands, I tell him, voice thin and brittle. I debate walk in the gift-cross the street, but find my own feet carrying me not to assess Delaney's door, but in the reverse direction, past the houses whose windows seem to blink, half-romb lines hastily lowered when I pass. I want evidence. I want a break. At the Sloan house, Paul is sweeping confetti off a stupid shore, angry motions. His eyes are bagged, haunted. I step into his line of sight, mourning. He nods not looking me in the face. I brought something, I say thrusting the second box at him, as if that will break whatever Paul has settled over our street. He glances down at it, expression and readable. Thanks, he says, but not with relief. More as if he's reading from a script. We all have to do our part right. Are you? I trail off.

23:02The way to the question, are you all right? Do you remember any of this? Can you explain it to me? It's too heavy to hand over. Paul shrugs. It's the lane. You forget things here unless you've got something in your hands that's what my dad used to say, better to deliver the gift than to wonder what you missed. He watches his sons by no child on it, the wheel turning, as if propelled by some phantom wind. I walk away, the gift heavier for having left it there. At the Delaney porch, before I raise my hand to knock, a curtain flicks open. The sister-laney meets my gaze tied as brimming with some emotion I can't pause fear. Oh, she picks up the package with shaking hands, holding it like gospel or loaded gun. I can't remember if I meant to bake the cake where only eat it, she says, the words tumbling out as if they've been bottled up too long. I keep thinking wasn't there some reason for all this. Do you remember, Sylvia? Tell me you do. I open my mouth, breath-catching am I supposed to. I should say yes, surely, to make her feel better, but the lice snags. I think it's just the sentence lands unfinished, collapsing like a tower of cards. Something shudder is behind her, just past the open door of flicker at the offer image of a child's

24:04buling in stale air. The sister-laney sings a titan on the gift box. He always with a one who got it right, Sylvia, she whispers, eyes on me, but not seeing me. Always, even the year we lost her, but she stops. The rest is silence. I turn away, feeling the day starting to run off the rails. On the walk home, I spot my crouching on her front steps, a ragga journal open on her knees. She glances up wary. Hey, she says, doodling absently in the margin. Did you put one of these on my porch? She holds up, folded envelope, already creased from being opened and shut 100 times. I don't think so. It's the truth, though I can't swear about it. She scales flicking one edge of her board with her thumb. My mom says to play a long neighborhood stuff, be neighborly, don't ask questions, but you know what feels weirdest. I had this dream a party, lots of people singing, but everybody had the same face yours, like all grown up, all's dairy. I freeze. What do you mean? She shrugs, obviously uncomfortable. I don't know, it was just a dream. A shut rings out across the street of tight, stahelsound. Mrs. Chew standing by her trash

25:09bin shoulder-squared. She holds a silver rub parcel over her head, then slams it into the bin, face set and determined. Not doing it this year, she announces loudly, voicing anyone to contradict her. Not again. Someone claps half-hearted. But as I watch, the plastic lid of her trash bin rattles in something silver impossible, but true slithes up the side and right back onto her porch and in full view, untouched, as if nothing ever happened. Mrs. Chew blanches. She unlocks her front door with hands trembling, so badly she nearly drops her keys. Across the street, as soon as she vanishes inside, drawn by unease more than curiosity, the envelope sits at her threshold unruffled. When I lean in to touch it just a tap of my knuckle, it's so cold it bites. This one is addressed to GC, with gratitude, remember. I catch my distorted reflection in the silver, my face seems thinner, hair longer, for an instant, a child's eyes stir through mine and then vanish. A cold sweat prickles my scalp. Everything all right? Mr. Hella calls from his stoop, voice brittle. I shake my head, unable to frame what I'm feeling. I've been here fifty years,

26:12he sighs. And I couldn't tell you why we do the things we do, except he. He doesn't finish the thought. He just folds himself back into his chair, head drooping. Later, I see the mailman. He waves, but when his gaze falls on the envelope in my hands, the smile falters. Servo's bad luck on a birthday, my ground used to say, but I guess that's lane rules. He presses a stack of bills at me, fingers careful not to brush to envelope. As dust presses in lawn and drawn out, the way only march knows how I find myself cattle looking everything odd, dogs refusing the streets, scouts increasing agitation, barking at corners where the wall shatters pull deeper and crawl up the wallpaper. Gifts that arrive, perfectly wrapped, in places I couldn't have put them. Songs drifting faintly from the trees after a sunsed melody is I almost recognize lyrics that finish at the edge of hearing. A knock sounds at the back door once and then twice more. I peer out through the tiny smudge pain, nothing and no one, only the distortion of the garden and moonlight. I look for movement but see nothing. Still, I unlock the door and step into the yard, cool grass pressing between my toes. The air is thick with the perfume of old lila

27:14kind of trace of blown out candles. My hands shake. I don't understand why I'm doing this, only that it must be done. In the center of the backyard, I find a cowling trail of silver paper glittery scraps leading toward the old fence. I follow them, bending to pick each one up. They dissolve at my touch, vanishing like wet tissue. At the back fence, caught on a nail, hangs a faded boat to hat the kind with a tin supon at the tip. The elastic is brittle, crumbling where I thumb it. The word special is printed in childish marker. As I stand, struggling to make sense of it, a sharp pain ceases my temple's memory not truly mine. It's a flush, a row of children at a table under the old fir tree kick just slice, all heads turning to me and singing that awful cheerful tune with teeth too big, smiles too strained. I remember clapping, feeling an expectation settle over me, dense and choking. It's your turn, Sylvia up in it, remember. But the rest leaks away like teeth through old Muslim. All at once, the porch lights up in Dampar could lain flicker as if in Silent Morse code. I hurry back inside, locking the door and drawing the shades. I gather my things a purse, a scoff,

28:17keys and consider getting into the car and driving until every memory of this street is just a smear. Except when I try it, my keys don't fit the ignition. The dashboard clock spins backward, numbers blurring. I drop everything overwhelmed. The envelope from the McCree House peeks out from beneath the sink. Against all logic, I take it with me as I wander the house, checking corners for gifts I didn't buy, cause I didn't sign. Every time I shut a cupboard and another silver glint waits at the edge of sight. Each time I blink, I risk finding myself mid-task, mid-cellipration and hand-lighting a candle, the other wrapping a ribbon as if the present is rewriting itself against my will. There is a rhythm to these errands, a sense of ritual I can't shake. Each named to each gift every year, year after year. Yet, no matter how many times I try to chart it, the patterns shift my name the only constant. Tomorrow, I decide I will return to the McCree House to the source to whatever brought the tradition here to Rottenfester. For tonight, I will do nothing more than keep vigils, gout-culled at my feet, the envelope on the table before me, I will keep my hands on what's real, the dogs fur, the warmth of the lamp, the thrum of my own blood.

29:19The shadows swell against the baseboards, moonlight pooling in the creases of the room. I stare at the envelope one last time, reading my own name no, not a Rogers, but Sandster, my child's self-resurfacing in the ink swell. Remember, within steady hands, I tuck the envelope beneath my pillow. My bed feels wrong that night harder, slightly lopsided even as sleep finally overtakes me, dreams mob with clipped vusses and gift-bags. I dream I am both child and adult, sitting at a lawn table's mother in silver paper, each guest a familiar stranger. We sing to one another, gifts passing back and forth across the shining center. I try to count to present, keep track of whose turn it is, but the faces flicker-pull turns into Mrs. Chew, who becomes my mother, then I'll become shade of myself. Each time I open a box, another appears, every time I say thank you, the table lengthens receiving into darkness. At the head of the table sits the sheep from the street, wearing a birthday hat, it smiles a black line dividing its face. It lifts the glass to us, a voice-liding over the chorus, remember. I wake abruptly in pre-don Gray, breath-sawing in my throat, pillow damp, fingers clutching the envelope with such force the edges,

30:21split my skin a bead of blood-saining the arm in my name. Scouts stare at me, head cocked. Only the dog isn't changed, his body real and grounded in a way nothing else is. I rise slow, every muscle stiff. Today, I tell myself, today I'll get answers. I dress keellessly jeans sweater, windbreaker check myself in the mirror and flinch. For a half second, my reflection waver is, my hair too shades lighter. A child's face shines through, thinner, spectral, superimposed. The neighborhood is glassy with dew. President Barack Obama. Virginia, we are counting on you. Republicans want to steal enough seats in Congress to raid the next election and wield unchecked power for two more years, but you can stop them by voting yes by April 21st. Help put our elections back on a level playing field and let voters decide not politicians. Vote yes by April 21st. Paid for by Virginians for fair elections. Liberty Mutual customizes your car and home insurance, and now we're customizing this ad for

31:24your morning commute to wake you up. Which could help your driving? Science says that stimulating the brain increases alertness. So here's a pop quiz. How many months have 28 days? What gets wetter as it dries? What is keys but can't open locks? If you don't want to hear the answers, turn off this Liberty Mutual ad now. 12 months, a towel, piano. Enjoy being fully alert. Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty As I walk back toward the McCree House, the lane seems deserted while a window blind shot, even the wing on silent. The house is press close as a freeing me in. At the end of the block, the McCree place stand heavy and still am on the nettles. The morning sun glints off each broken pain, silver as a nice edge. I push this time through the side gate and let the rusted door wind open into the dark. The collapse of the side is slower than I remember Cobwood's draping ruin picture frames, light pulling at the edges of room stuff with boxes and old mattresses. The air is syrupy with age, then did like a party long deflated. There is before, in a corner by

32:25a stack of walk tinnels in a child's bicycle wheel, the cache of omblopes, each one shining dully. A crouch, heart thundering against my ribs. Again the omblopes my name repeated child like handwriting, the dates layered year over year. The scroll is jittery with childish earnestness. A heart of star seasons each, subtler with each year. The nameswirl and change neighbor's old and new, those long since dead. Only mine is constant. The floorboards creak from somewhere deep in the house. I freeze torn between fight and flight, calling out his soft, foolish hello, footsteps. Delicate, then long like someone limping on stilts. They draw closer, pausing right behind the broken french doors. I stand, omblope in hand, light as a nerve. The figure slits into visibility, not a person, but every person, a composite wearing the birthday hat from my dream party favor clenched in one fist. Face blur, changing even as I try to focus. Sometimes it's my mother, sometimes my own slight form is a child, or messello, or the stranger from the photograph. The figure walks toward me. The space between uswops and curves, then a shimmering impossible corridor.

33:29It proffers an omblope, this one older, battered at the corners, as if it's been through many hands and wathers. My metonym sense to clear is up at me, they escalate till it nearly breaks. I take the omblope and the world dropped half an octave. A chill rolls along my skin, the party rooms air pulses with thick pressure. You always forget, but you always return. The words come from the figure. Or from me. All from a mingled chorus, as if memory is a shared muscle. The phrase etches itself deeper with each repetition. As the light flicker, the floor boards heave, and somewhere in the street aside, a bell rings, the sound that might be invitation or dismissal, I cannot decide which. I stand there, handshaking over the omblope, on the doorstep of my own impossible childhood. And the moon, step fast above, bays the lane and cold silver. Somewhere, dawn is crawling thin and watery over park with lane, but the light refuses to reach me where I sit, kitchen chair gouged into my thigh, scout panting quietly at my feet. The silver omblope lies spread before me with that looping s, sanzster, childlike, undeniable. The words ring in the paper's hush, you always forget, but you always return.

34:32My thoughts won't gather. There's no panic. Instead, something has not weighed the inside of me, leaving a cold hush under my skin. The air tastes like wax and stale frosty. The lamp above the table flickers in silent. Rhythmic spasms, leaving old stains moving across the wallpaper roses. Scout looks up, winds, then circles resistlessly, clawing lightly at the door until I let him out into the bright silent street. Everything out there sidings, grass, windows as the washed outlook of a place just rinsed with bleach. I step to the threshold for getting ironman's lippers. Do seeps through the lining, the cold chases up my calves. Ports reels and mailbox all shine silver are naturally bright. The neighbor's house is crouching a choir. Not a single soul I've not obsessed with any with a water and can, not my grinding her skateboard at the curl, not even pulls board running across the grass. The lane feels suspended, all breath held. Most porches bear a shape a silver omblope or rat package. When I drift to the mailbox, there are greeting cards inside but all addressed from me, in handwriting I don't recognise. I never wrote these. Each card is folded with uncomfortable precision,

35:35script that lives wildly in some places, clipped like a child's printing in others. Each one thanks a neighbor for a gift to scoff I do not earn a pie I never baked a book I have no memory of reading. Stamped and sent, then marked return to sender. My name and address printed and stilted, perfect letters, as if by someone trying hard to mimic me. Swallowing, I turn to scan the lane. A silver omblope winks at every stoop, all but one, the McCree House. Gaze in blind eyeed through its just filmed windows, tapes lumping in the morning heat. For a second, memory doubles me as a girl, crouched with sticky hands on that porch, forced to sing a birthday song I never wanted to remember. Vaughn, just like that, slipping through the mines cracks. Inside, my phone buzzes. Not a real winton just a faint, persistent white noise vibration, as if the vibration itself is struggling to be heard. The screen glows with two texts from unknown numbers. Each says the same thing, thank you for remembering. My thumb hovers above the screen before I shut it off in jam, it under the sofa pillow. I wander for a while, have drifting, testing doors and windows in my house. I pause at the mantel, stare at the wedding photo that always sits there me and veil,

36:38Eric grinning behind the case. Today, there's a slippage my face older somehow, Eric's suit collar and familiar, pose the distance off. The next frame down is when I don't remember a birthday party long ago, me at the center, a crowd of neighbors smiling past the camera's grain. The silver envelope is in my hand, the corner's bent. The figure's around me look anxious, forced, and behind a balloon, the blurred shape of someone who wasn't there isn't anyone, surely. Stepping out onto the porch, the lane is waking but in the wrong order. Mr. Sloan is raking the same patch of leaves again and again, never making progress. My stands, with her by kelmit, staring as if waiting for someone to come outside and sculpt her. Mrs. Chew's door stands a jaw, a silver envelope pinned under her brick in the threshold, the glass in her window already fogged with condensation as if a storm has just passed within. The whole street feels tall as a drawn wire. I wander up to Mrs. Delinny's for sit here, silver envelope in my pocket. Her porch, usually so tidy, is scattered with curling ribbons and scraps of wax paper. The sense sickly sweet, icing siren in the sun. She opens the door's sliver, eyes room tight and red. Morning, Sylvia, she says. Her voice is older, fainter. I was just thinking

37:45about cake. Is it your birthday? I asked before I can stop myself, half expecting her to flinch away. A pause. It's always somebody's birthday, isn't it? I glance at her hand, she's wearing a scarf I frantically try to recall giving her. I cannot. But it's exactly the shade I might have chosen. She follows my gaze, fingers bunching at her neck. Did you want something? I just wanted to ask about the lists. My voice is rough scratchy. She stares through me. I get them, we all get them. If you dove well, I'm not sure, but it's better if you do. Before I can press her further, from the end of the lane, a child's laughter rings out the wrong kind of laughter, thin and echoing, like a cassette tape running dry. Every head on the street turns, bod is moving as if jerked by the same invisible string. For a moment, every window is filled with faces peering out. A brob pleat Mrs. Delinny shuts the door. A note tack to the window behind her reeds, remember. The scent of wax and burnt sugar thickens, sickening and wrong. The street tilts are grit the railing to keep steady. Scout is at my heel silent for once. He looks up at me

38:48as glimmering with something like warning. A cloud passes over the sun, severing all the lawns. The wind comes up from nowhere, towsling old party favors and gutters, driving a plastic crown across the street. I scoop it up, thinly hoping it will make me laugh, but the elastic is frayed, and the inside is gold with a single name, Sylvia. I take that as a cue marching back through my own yard, I try the old trick. Get in a car, drive away, leave this mess for someone else. The keys again, refuse to fit the ignition. Cork spins backward. On the seat, a birthday card already signed by me to pull, dated last month. I slide out, slamming the door harder than necessary. The cow's radio bursts briefly into a haunting, childish arrangement of a happy birthday to you, voices overlapping into a slow, tuneless round before falling silent. Scout barks once at the back window tail high. He wants to run, but the leash is tangled around the porch banister, as if someone pre-tied it before we woke. Inside the house, the air is colder. The envelopes reappear each time I put them away on my pillow, behind a jow in the fridge, even inside the medicine cabinet.

39:49My own handwriting isn't mine, not really. Every old birthday photo now features the same silver envelope tucked into my fist, or balanced on a stack of gifts. Outside, children's voices merge into a chant. Keep the list, keep the list. This scooters flash by, wheels stuttering on the uneven pavement, never touching the silver the way I have expect them to. By afternoon, my nerves feel skyred out. Pulse at the edge of his driveway. Can you make any sense of this? I want to ask what, but he weighs his hand, motioning me closer. The gifts, the lists, my son had a nightmare, said the lane eats you if you forget your birthday. I laughed, told him not to talk nonsense, but. Pulse quints at the crumpled card in his hand, the very one from my car. I don't remember getting this last year, or the year before. We both look at the houses, all closed up in silent. The wind picks up, tossing a tangle of silver foil into a neighbor's bushes. Pulse on appears at the door, face frogged with fear, eyes wide and too old. It's not safe for the boy calls for shaking. We're not supposed to talk about it. Pulse linches. Maybe we should just play along. I leave him muttering.

40:52Scout's hugs at my hand, leading me around the block like he's tracing a circuit. Wherever I go, the street feels repeated, recursive the houses and fell in the wrong order, Mrs. Slow waving from a window that should face away from my yard. Three times in quick succession, the same dog on the far block trots passed us. The third time, I watched its lesions pull behind in a neat line, silvered by the new light. On my return, I find an unfamiliar child sitting on my sheep clutching a rap box. Where are you, Sylvia? She asks. I, yes, who are you? She shrugs. We just moved here. My mom said you'd know who gets this. She thrust the box at me. It's heavy, sealed with a ribbon. No tag. Horizon-wise, not with malice, but with some knowledge of child art not know. We all give gifts, that's the rule. She wanders off before I can say more. I'd open the box inside, a puzzle I gave Mr. Heller at wrapped again, the paper slightly different. I want to throw it. Instead, I clutched it to my chest and stagger and doors, sliding down the wall to the floor. Scat coals up beside me in size, as if resigned. A bell tolls at the end of the lane. The passage

41:56of a birthday, the turn of the day. An eye or later, a missing poster is taped to Mrs. Shew's window her face partially crossed out. The words do you remember, skull below. That night's leap peels away. The dreams are sharpened out peculiar memories of birth is not my own, press between layers of salt and confetti. I see flashes through with those eyes, grace to clutch it, gift so tight the paper cracks, my running bear for through due grass, endless hounds reaching after her, pulse sun, lost in a crowd of silent adults, the birthday candles never going out. Sometime before dawn, I hear a crack escape board snapped into outside my house. A sharp cry muffled. By first light, my mother is already at the curb, fingers white round a cup of coffee quietly weeping. The street wakes again, never quite the same. Mrs. Shew has gone howl stands empty, no evidence of her, even in photos stuck to her window. In place of her mailbox is an empty bracket where her name once was now a gap. I want to run door to door to scream for someone to explain what is happening, but terrace slows me. The faces of the neighbors, once familiar her drawn stretch, all expectation and hunger.

42:58By noon, Parkwood Lane's community board a strip bear, safe for one gleaming list. The birthdays are printed in neat rows, every name including children, newcomers, names I know are wrong tidally marked out for the next 10 years. At the top is an instruction, never forget. A pen tied with a silver cord dangles like a threat. I touch the list. The paper is cool, gluey, hard to pry away from the notice board. It all cows up a block, a soundful of dismay and warning. My own scout, shuffling at my feet, wimpers and licks at my wrist, gaze pleading as though I could somehow fix it all. I walk in drifting circles, never really leaving sight of my house. Each errand is a trial. The grocery store lights are too bright. Plurk smiled too widely, pushing silver wrap puzzles at me. For your list, dear, one repeats all teeth and force cheer. At checkout, my name prints on the receipt to Happy Birthday to Sylvia though it's not my day. I check the calendar on my phone, which now cycles the date backward. Scroll too far and I find birthdays stacking on top of each other, my own repeated in place all their names. At the park children chant the list to monotone, scooters clattering by, keep the list,

44:02keep the list, never once looking straight at me. The edges of my mind are fraying. Memory sneak in that out-mind picnic tables, arguments, a goldfish in a jar on me, always in the background, giving, giving, remembered only for holding a gift. One night, the trembling shadow returns, reflected on the pain of glass by the door. The air turns febrile, thick with candelox and sire suites. The more I resist refusing to open new gift, leaving silver envelopes and touch the stronger the distortions grow. My dog refuses fruit, scrubbing at unseen shapes with the whole shadows clutch and not. In the window, the inside of the glass grows down, pass mildly face traced in with a finger not my own. My own name peppers every ear and every surface. In a lost moment, I find myself folding a card, hands numb, pen poised above a rey, remembrance. The ordinary rules are gone. One night, when I tried to drift asleep, I see not my face but an older woman's watching from my mirror, silent, weeping, silver envelopes sliding from her lap and slithering onto the floor. You can't resist, a voice insists, near their kind nor cruel. Scat stands in the hall, barking at nothing. I bundle him under my arm, feeling his heartbeat.

45:07He looks at me and wavering truss, some hope I no longer hold. Determined, I'll try to find the origin. Not a neighbor, but a walker, the one who leaves these envelopes, wherever I turn even the fountains of my childhood. President Barack Obama. Virginia, we are counting on you. Republicans want to steal enough seats in Congress to raid the next election and wield unchecked power for two more years, but you can stop them by voting yes by April 21st. Help put our elections back on a level playing field and let voters decide not politicians. Vote yes by April 21st. Paid for by Virginians for fair elections. Liberty Mutual customizes your car and home insurance, but now we're customizing this ad for your morning commute to wake you up. Which could help your driving? Science says that stimulating the brain increases alertness. So here's a pop quiz. How many months have 28 days? What gets wetter as it dries? What is keys but can't open locks? If you don't want to hear the answers,

46:08turn off this Liberty Mutual ad now. I set my clock by midnight on the way to the window in the blue light, listening past scouts wine and the soft leaking drip of the kitchen tap. I'd have passed something triggers the odd lights movement at the far corner, a shape guiding two toll, moving in fits and starts trailing a tattooed cape of birthday banners and half deflated balloons. It is this between the houses, casting no shadow, sometimes blinking out, sometimes resolving into fragments of faces are almost, but do not recognize. I creep from the kitchen, spy and ridger, breathing through my nose, scut nestled quite at my feet. Each step carries weight and dread. Uninstinct, I follow the figure crosses the yard, slides to a recessed nose hedge, pauses under the old lamp light on the corner of parkward and churred. It isn't one person. At the ever shift, the figure's height shortens, arms lengthened, a jaw lift sort of a blur, a child's voice leaks out of what could be a throat or just a shape of longing. It's every neighbor, every child, everyone who's ever gotten a list or delivered a gift.

47:11It's me too, sometimes a shiver at the spine, an echo in a voice. As it passes in a tree house, I follow, uninvited, no longer neighbor but an intruder in a ritual I cannot escape. A wind slips through full of the scent of icing, forgotten candles, the faintest scent of smell of mildew and loss. The figure moves to the side yard, where partly hidden by vines and toppled garden numbs, I spy a hinged door in the foundation. I force it with my shoulder, scraping skin raw in the process. Scout nudges past me, the dark beyond stinks of mildew, carnival poppers, old cardboard. Descending the stairs, my phone flashlight jittering over the scene, I see it, a basement shrine, smothered in old party banners, tarnished tinsel. All along the back wall, dozens no, hundreds of silver enveloped our raid, stacked in perfect rows, waxed corners culling with time. The walls pulse with old portraits, every resident, and some who must have moved away, all as children. Where if they hats, pinch smiles, each child holding a silver envelope, eyes glazed with the effort of pretending happiness. The faces change somewhere my mother, some are me, some shrink, and go impossibly small a mistake of loss and demand. At the center,

48:13a party table set for feast, collapse and cake, brittle streamers, mountain of rap gifts ladle for me in various hands. Walloons overhead scuttle along the ceiling as if alive shadows playing inside their silver bellies. Candy bulls lift up for years, all the rapper sticky. On the party table sits a letter book, edges eaten away, a child squiggle in the cover at the list. I touch it. The smell sharpens. Behind me, the figure stands, now fading in an out of focus. Contours dissolve between adult and child, parent and neighbor, self and stranger. The diaries page is a fever centrist from a time before I was born, a tragedy told in broken language. Lower gone, we mustn't forget, say, keep the circle. Gifts must be given. If you forget, you forget everything. A line appears over and over, desperate, we mustn't forget her. Gifts keep us safe, the list remains. The surrounding air thickens as I turn pages. Names erased. Then circles, so vise angster. Next to it, remember. Over and over, years blending until litany. This began for you to remember, to keep everyone safe, but not, it keeps everyone here.

49:17The voice is everywhere, all nerves and sadness edges trembling. It's not the figure speaking. It's me. Or maybe it's everyone my own certainty and spooling as the figure flickers. Why me? My voice echoes in the room. The words come out horse, thinner than I mean. He was the first to be forgotten, the voice answers every neighbor's voice, my own, of course, as thick as dust. He was the first who was lost, the first who needed remembering, he gave the first gift, he wrote the first list. A fever surges. My hands childish for an instant are writing a name, pressing silver paper, sealing an envelope. Then older, scribbling desperately, remember me, remember me, remember. You are the center, the figure murmurs. You are the pattern. I shake. Scotland's clothes is warm, the only real thing. A low-grind timber flexing above. It sounds as if the world might wrench apart the house above a shivering in its old bones. All the wrap presents on the table pulse with shadow, popping on invisible air. The figure's faces collapse and reassemble. Panic clothes is my throat. If I break this circle,

50:18if I end it, what happens? I plead. The figure's voice is a sigh through everyone I've ever known. You can stop this, it whispers. But you'll be forgotten. The lane need to memory, or it devires itself, fuel this appear. All this. A gesture, the house, the street, the world as I've known it, it depends on the gifts, the names. I press the book to my chest. Behind me, in a gloom, the silver envelopes gleam. I want to rip them all apart to force the truth out into the air. But terror roost me. Scots tongue is warm on my ankle, and all at one sound five, and fifty, and lost, and found. You can break it to the figure marmer's pleading and predatory. But you'll never come back. You'll be the one lost, this time for good. I drop the book, snatch one of the engine, unloads my own name, so many years ago and wrench it open. The card inside reads only, forgetting her to worse than absence, remember. And then it all surges, a wave of names hands, gifs, ruined cake, and laughter sooth in its nearlyest green. The shrine pulses, the air becomes fiscous. Scout howls. The door of slams, a stompede of feet passes overhead.

51:22I scramble at the stairs, desperate for the air outside, dragging scout in my wake, enveloped raining around me in a storm of silver. On the lane, neighbors have gathered in the street, faces blank, all clutching rap parcels, some weeping, some smiling in rictus masks. For one moment, I see them as they truly are, children wearing adult faces hands out to receive. Some of them blur flicker, double as a stare. I shout, this isn't real stop, look at yourselves. My own voice is a shriek, unrecognizable. Someone moans, someone else begins to sing the birthday song, tumeless, relentless, round and round. The refrain is impossible to silence. A parade of figures every variation of parent, neighbor, child rounds the corner, carrying silver wrapped boxes, like palbarras and some happy funerals. In their wake, the lane warps. The houses flicker between tidy, painted, broken, ruined. For an instant, the trees grow, and all the lawns are covered in confetti, wet and sagging. Bloons bobbed from mailboxes straining on invisible cords. The figure from the basement comes forward, shape stretched, overfull, assembled from faces, I will never fully recognise.

52:26For a moment, every erased resident is visible smiling, waving, every one of them holding a silver on the lobe and melting a single whore, remember. The party is happening everywhere I know where, the ethic with that bright note of wax, warm cake, melding sugar. A neighbor I can't tell which stretches out a hand to me, fingers slick with old icing. If you don't take it, we all vanish, you first as she whispers. I step back, clutching scat. Now, no more. From every porch, every window, the chant begins, keep the list, keep the list. The lane becomes a pulsing corridor, neighbours shoving parcels, faces flickering with every chant. I gather all the silver envelopes, I canna recluse, shoveling grab from every porch, every mailbox, every door slaughter can reach. Scout followers barking, teeth buried. The neighbours do not try to stop me, they simply watch, faces nodded with hope and dread. Gif after gif, envelope after envelope, the pile in my arms grows until I can barely carry it. I stared out to my yard, dropped the whole mess on to last year's fire pit crackling with cold, sticky fire started blocks from some birth they cook out,

53:26I never attended. With bare hands, I rip the paper, the ribbons, the wrappings, until nothing is new, nothing is saved. A neighbour's voice, if you do this, will disappear with you. Dirty sea, we never ask for this. I ignore them, strike a match, I'm with trembling fingers like the pile. Silver erupts in dull, accret smoke. The package is burst, full crumpling. The wind whips the smoke into my clothes hair. The sky above flickers clouds break in reform blue, silver, black, gone. The lane's daughters. Houses change, some sag to ruin, some brighten into something out of a dream. The whole block carines through years in a breath pain peels, gross fresh, cracks again, vanishes. Every neighbour flickers old, young, old, young, sometimes not there at all. The shadow figure appears behind a fire, faces ticking by like a slide show, lust of all settling on what might once have been my own hair short and struggling, eyes wide, mouth fixed in the line between pleading and accusation. You can stop this, but you'll never have been. It says, voice rough of the dozen bored registers. The chanting stops. The smoke babbles over the lane, strikes the grass,

54:29tangles and branches. Scout hulls and noise more animal than I've ever heard, and for a moment everything blurs. In the shimmer, I see parqued lane, empty. Not a single figure, not even scout. Just houses hollowed out, paint-pailed, loans crawl into our wilderness. Every stoop bears a single, acclaimed envelope, shining dolly in grey light. My arms crackle with cold and panic. Neighbours faces, names, gifts, every word exchanged a case and flies away in the smoke. My hands lunge for the pyre, pressing straight into the burning paper, the heat crisps in my skin, the furious stink burning my eyes. Let it then, I beg. Let it all end. Blackness falls, cool as shade after some sun. Morning rakes then need through what remains of parqued lane. The houses are fewer and now may be a handful, strung out past scragly gardens and fading picket fences. Where once the lane was clipped and bright, is gun-ferral. A for sale board, spunter, leans against a base of an old dogwood. The lawns are overrun, violets and dandelions drowned by the lengthening grass. I am not here, not in any photograph, not in any windows' memory.

55:32The porch at my house's vacant mailbox stuff without native flyers, the door gently jar. Fathered down the lane, only mylingers by the cove grew in strange and lonely, surveying the cracked flags that lie in the gardens as if remembering something lost. One night in a new hush, a little girl wakened by giggling pears from her window. On the stoop below, slick in midnight, lies a single silver envelope, a marked but fur leaping and familiar hand. The girl picks it up shivering and certain. Inside, only the word remember, pressed deep as a wish that cannot be insaid. Inside, only the word remember, pressed deep as a wish that cannot be insaid. Dawn seats in toparqued lane and thin, trophy lines, barely enough to separate the shapes of houses from the tangle, tied gardens. The air too is then or not that anyone here remarks on it. Beneath the dogwood, do slicks to crack stones, and the girl, on the look clutch tightly, stands small and almost part of the scenery as if her feet have always been planted exactly in that hush of memory and wild grass. For a long moment, nothing moves. The girl shivers in her nightgun, bear toes

56:32caving away from the cold porch and sure if she wants to call for her mother and sure if she remembers her. The word in the envelope has a pull to it to gravity. Not magic exactly, but something older, as if every other word has receded until only this one can be truly spoken. The lane behind her is near silent except for a single, small dog barking in the yard, three doors down a bark, strangely sharp, echoing against the emptiness of neighbouring houses. Maya, older than before, stands brawl at her curb, watching as though the world has grown lopsided in the night. She shields her eyes with her hand, squinting as if hoping the summer is might reveal something missing from the ensemble of shares, rusted swings, and garden numbs left after the wind shifted. A car passes at a crawl of real estate agent or just a family searching for a place that doesn't itch inside the bones. The driver's face is hidden by a thick sun visor, but for an instant the girl, still holding her envelope, wonders if she's seen them before. Or if she's always been supposed to see them. Beffert, she wanders to the cracked flags tend at the curb. The envelope trembles a little as if catching every stray gust. She looks to Maya for permission or guidance, but Maya says nothing, only tightens the hoodie around her, one foot spinning the wheel

57:36of a bicycle laid on its side. At last, Maya approaches. Did you get one? Maya's voice is careful, cracked older and too aware. The girl nods, paper press off in her palm. It says remember, she looks up confused. Remember what? Maya chooses her lip, watching the lane as it breathes in the morning. The grass glithes in the ferroquiet, not a single stream of sprinkler occur, his suppose in the usual spots. Aficail-sying creeks would a breeze hunts for something to play with. I used to remember kick on my birthday, Maya says absently. Now I can't remember this song, not the real one. She reaches out, almost like she wants, touch the envelope, but stop short, hand-drawn back as if the silver might buy. My mom used to say if you forget, it comes back, or someone comes for you, or maybe if you don't forget you're still here. The girl frowns at the word in the envelope, mouth-forming at its silence. She wants to ask what there is to remember of only greyhouses, lawns run wild, a swing-chained high in a tree that might not have been there yesterday. On some inner signal, both looked toward the end of the lane, with a mercury house

58:37slumped behind a wall of brambles, windowpane, some blinking, and a me-reflective. The place is vacant, but the centre of it is not like a memory that underbay logic, it sits expected. A figure passes on the sidewalk, head down, scarfwind too many times for early spring. Did you not look up, but leave a feather of silver confetti drifting after. The girl glances at Maya was that person here yesterday. Well, last year, the feeling that the lane is one seat short, or one chair too many, tugs at both of them. Across the street, a porch rocks empty, a broken tricycle tipped over on its side. My turns back to the girl was reluctant, but all the gentle. I think you keep it, she says, nodding at the envelope. I think that's all you have to do. What happens if I don't the girl whispers? The question hangs, each word like a pebble dropped into a deep and seen pool. I don't know, says Maya. I used to know someone who might have, but I can't really remember her name anymore. She was the one who used to put names on the list, or maybe she just made sure everyone had a present. She's not here now. Sometimes, I think about her when I can't sleep, but it's like a dream that got mixed up. Maya blinks hard, I'm stinging. The dog, and settled now,

59:42presses close to the Gaussian. He noses at the silver envelope, sneezes, then her is back through the dandelion grass, looking over his shoulder like he expects someone to follow. Far down the lane, a doorbangs open too loud for morning. Someone yells a name, but it is swallowed by the wind that picks up all at once, scattering loose blossoms past their feet. It's the sort of wind that feels out of season, promising rain that won't come for Ayers. Maya gathers her bike with slow, practice movements, and wheels it to the curb. You should go inside, she says to the girl. It's more warning than suggestion, but the girl understands the tone. She starts toward her porch. Silver envelope grips so tight the word inside nearly breaks through the paper. As she climbs the steps, she risks a glance backward, Maya is already heading up the walk to her own door, head bent, brave flashing in the new sun. Inside the girl's house, the air is different. Light cuts dusty lines over the worn, broken, and washed breakfast plates. Her mother stands at the sink, staring into the garden as if expecting someone, or waiting for the front to ring. Did she get something? Her mother asks without turning, voice thinned by forgetting or by having

1:00:44had to ask too many times already. The girl falters and sure what story is safe. She tucks the envelope into her pocket and mumbles just a card from someone. Her mother nods, scrubbing a plate slow and absent. Be sure to say thank you. The words are wrote the rhythm of dozens of lessons before. The girl slips upstairs, envelops still in hand, feeling the weight of the word against her legs as she climbs. In her room, she lies on the unmade bed, breath fluttering, holding the envelope against her chest, not daring to open it again. Outside, the lane continues doors creaking in the wind, a mailbox slams open then closed, a shadow curls past the fence and is gone. The world wants her to bear the memory to hold the weight for one more cycle. The word in the on the opposite teddy, a charged pass down, ready to spark again when the time is right. And that is the end. Thank you for listening, and I will see you in the next one. President Barack Obama. Virginia, we are counting on you. Republicans want to steal

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