Memory

by Nathalie Boisard-Beudin

In the wooden halls of memory, I seek an escape, banging on doors that will not let me in or out anymore. I started the construction of that mighty manor house some years ago at the suggestion of a therapist: I was having problems sorting out my thoughts at the time, confused about who I might be and why some unpleasant things happened to me. It was meant to store the bits of knowledge I’d scraped along and which I thought of as being important at the time as well as holding my repressed secrets safe. So I went along with the notion, sorting and compartmenting the memories as I built the gothic construction around them, room after room, stairways after secret passages, careful in the way I kept them well apart lest they meet and mingle, breed or even gang upon me. However, while I thought they were my captives, they in time closed all the doors on me - one after the other - and I am left wandering empty corridors, begging for scraps of light, of warmth while people and places around me gradually lose their names, their faces, their scents. Now the only thing I really want is to fly away.

6S

Nathalie Boisard-Beudin, whose full catalog is here, is French but currently lives in Rome, Italy. Most of her writing is done in English, her second – and working – language. She works as in-house lawyer for the European Space Agency and has published micro-stories in the multi national anthology Wonderful World of Worders.