I remember a cup placed on a windowsill
I remember actually many cups, different sizes and stacked into piles and filling out most of the windowsills of the former hospital
I remember the smell of coffee before really having a relationship to coffee, filling carpeted hallways
I remember it mixing with the smell of paper and plastic phone receivers, ink and recycled air
I remember it meaning the comfort of a collectivity that I didn’t have an understanding of
I remember being terrified of going to school on some mornings for no apparent reason
I remember screaming and kicking and holding on to bedposts
I remember my mother’s perfume whose scent would comfort me
I don’t remember when she started wearing it
I remember being on a boat on the Nile
I remember finding out that the keys fit into most of the room’s locks
I remember finding towel swans in different constellations, sometimes kissing, on the beds
I remember the empty outline left by the Sphinx’s missing nose
I remember the perfume reminding me of Egypt, although I might have stitched these memories together much later
I remember my mom’s way of exaggeratedly pronouncing its name every time she would refer to it and now I can never read it without hearing her voice in my head