rewind: a memory about being different

one of my earliest experiences with shame happened while watching a movie.

my memoir-in-progress, unless a seed, is told in moments. it’s a story made from fragments of memory — beginning around four years old and continuing through my school years and into adulthood — all patched together into a tale of shame and grace, of hiding and healing.

many of these memories resurfaced during the three weeks between january twelfth and february fifth of 2021, when something i never saw coming thrust me into a journey i never wanted to take. it was a journey that required remembering: closing my eyes as twenty-six year old kati and opening them as fifteen, or nine, or four-year-old kati lynn.

it meant returning to the hard, the awkward, the painful, the dark. it meant revisiting those moments i wanted to forget, finding the little girl who was living them, and sitting beside her there for a while — as long as it took to make her believe she wasn’t alone.

here’s one of them.

rewind

the pull of those sideways triangles
too strong for me to resist —
a whirr as lines
blur the screen
the scene reverses
and i press play
at just the right moment
so it flashes by again
bright colors and sounds
memorized by now

but still, i need to see them again
hear them again
one more time
another
and another
and another
and another
and

“stop—”
he says,
the boy i love
(even though i’ve never heard the word
crush.)
he is in the room with me.
i didn’t hear him come in.

the boy
doesn’t want to watch
this scene with me
over again —
no,
he’d rather see the story
to The End
because his mind is a line

but mine is a loop
and the circles feel safe
and i don’t know why
but i really want
to push rewind
just one more time —

but i resist
because he is here
and he is annoyed
and now i’m scared
because i want this boy
to be my friend.

so i sit on the couch
and we watch to
The End
and Happily Ever After
and other words i can’t understand

and then
my friend
goes home.

i'm alone.

and now i know
all these shapes
(the circles,
the triangles) —

they must stay
a secret
between my fingers
and

the VCR.