Remembering

on place and anger

They started happening almost as soon as we pulled out of the rental car parking lot. Memories. Flashbacks. The smallest details pulled on threads from the fabric of my past: The innocuous name on a street sign. The way the sun felt as it tipped toward the mountains. The cells of my body and brain sparking in the familiar feeling of not enough oxygen.

I tried to focus on my new lens—I could trace the shape of the rocks and tell a different story of their past, and mine. I had learned so much over the decades of crumbling and rebuilding. No longer did I need to see Colorado as a place of being trapped.

But I turned my head and remembered too much.

Cait as a child with two of her siblings in the Rocky Mountains