the places where I remain no longer

a face can be an oval of love, an egg of recognition composed of parts only in retrospect. it can be a body. the entire body. of those we love the faces may waver in the light the way a musical phrase may shimmer in our minds, held there as a note held for the perfect amount of time so that what we see is a face but, honestly, might better just be called love. seeing love. it is so when I see her face. I wonder if a face can be made of other things, too. of the face and the setting behind the face, a garden, a house, a field of vision made of leaves and color so that the face is also something like what a painter might make watching a lake in September or rainfall in June. it can be the face in a room in a distant building that has been home or even one that has never been home. a room in a clinic. a room like hers. I guess it can be that. she does not know my face now. does not know our faces. she does not remember music, either, music which is so like a face, which opens up in a way that doesn’t say anything specific but instead reveals in what it does say perhaps only a lingering difference in time. she who knew music. who taught me music. yes, the face of a loved one may simply be called love, and when you see that face as it crosses a room or out the office window as it passes or in the clinic where it doesn’t know you you still see love. though it doesn’t see you yet or know you are there or know you at all. whom you love, you love. she no longer remembers us. but the field of memory is something else entirely.