Williamsburg had observed visitors from around America with different personalities, stories, and lifestyles. To her, the large, homeschooled family was simply another group of eager sightseers. To my family and me, though, Williamsburg was new territory with a plethora of early American history. The town, built to resemble colonial Williamsburg, fascinated and excited my family. Little did we know how temperamental the East Coast weather was—and how swiftly it could reverse.

Tasting
the faint
memory of chocolate,
a bitter smoothness
coating my mouth,
a musty sweetness
scenting the air,
pressingly intangible,
touching my mind,
the memory of chocolate.

Ashes of what once was
The memory faded
The scars healed
The tears now gone
The lesson never forgotten

Look at me; I can see my reflection in the glass
doors as I pull them wide.

I was running before a storm
and I could smell the rain
above the dusted plains
heavy and gray, what held it there?

She ran down the road—
I felt the dust in my throat:
dust yellow like chalk,
like a memory.

Look at me; I can see my reflection in the glass
chandeliers that clink overhead.

Tempest-tossed in the rising wind
that sent things into flight.
She—I?—bit her fingernails
and looked around with widened eyes.

6
I saw why we had taken a tumble on our exit. Brodie’s wooden front door was raised on a concrete step. The time machine door had also raised, but hinged itself half a meter too far left for the step. The two doors matched except for one detail. Where my eyes met a flower-etched panel of foggy glass on Brodie’s dark door, our time machine had the “translator key” watch. I could see the metal socket from the backside of the open door as well as the front.

2
Aunt Jess raised me, and when I was little I thought she just had a bad memory. She often struggled to monitor me, from asking me to turn on the oven twelve times straight to forgetting, in the car, that she was driving me to the library for a school project.

             I open my mouth to speak but then close it again. I have nothing to say. How do I respond to whatever this guy is asking and saying? Maybe I will tell him the truth, which is that I don’t know who he is. But he probably knows that I do not know him or else he wouldn’t be spitting out such things trying to lie to me. I open my mouth again still not knowing what to say so my words surprised me as much as him.

Stone never,
Stone never,
Stone never forgets.

Stone never forgets
The crushing behemoth’s tread
The crash of the great flood’s waves
The voices of kings long dead

Stone never forgets
Never forgets
The songs of bleeding, weeping exiles
Groaning slaves,
Screaming, dying warriors

Stone never forgets
Never, stone never forgets
Man comes and goes,
Kingdoms rise and die
Creatures are born and grow old
Creation groans in pain and toil