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I am sitting in a chair in a doctor’s office, or laying flat on my back on a table. My hands are shackled together and yours are free. You take my vital signs as we talk with each other about medical research back in the capital. They are working on a new lethal injection drug, something that works better than opiates. When your eyes meet mine, you look tired. You turn to leave. As you enter the world forever barred to me, I silently wish you good luck finding a better job.

I am sitting in a chair in Las Vegas, Nevada. You read me a list of legal rights and check my documents. My hands are bound, again. I don’t wish you much of anything. I have my own problems right now.

Another day, another chair, again in Las Vegas. My hands are free this time, and yours are as well. They fly across paper holding pen as you play Judas to my Christ. I sit and read and pay you no mind. In under ten days, I will never see this chair or this book or you again. As I am led away, I wish you will one day burn in Hell.

I’m someone else and somewhere else now. I have moved on and you never will. I’m in a small snow-covered villa in Flagstaff, Arizona. You come to my door and leave three light knocks. I let you in. You bring canned vegetables and company.

I’m somewhere in southern California, somewhere that might not yet have a name. I tower over you, so I bend down to speak with you as you hand me an escaped laying hen. I hold the bird in one hand and your hand in the other as we walk her back to the henhouse. I’m in Warm Springs, Nevada as you tear across the town square in fright, running from the shouts of the arms keeper and the elders. I’m meeting your gaze as you lay, chest heaving, trying to breathe with a shard of your own ribs piercing your lung.

I’m sitting in a bar and drinking wine with both of you as we discuss our work, the lack of funds, the late pay, how we’d never do anything else with our lives if we got the chance. We’re meeting on the street corner after class today, when you and I will practice our Latin grammar. I wonder if I’ll ever speak as well as you can. I’m on my knees and holding you in my arms, fragile as you take your first breath. I will send you West across the river and I will never know what became of you.

I stand on the Eastern bank of that same river with all five of you. Two of you cling to my arms and huddle together behind my back, as if I provide you with any meaningful cover in the bare desert. Someone will come with a boat for us soon, if all goes well.

On the river again, on top of the great Dam this time, your hand tenderly holds my hand as you guide my fingers to the letters spilled out across the page. C A T. Cat. Neither of us have ever seen a cat in person, but I know what one looks like now and how to read out its name thanks to you. I’m sitting in a long row of men in the canteen, and you look hungrier than me. I slip you a plate of neon green fruit flavored gelatin that I have sworn to never eat again.

I’m curled up in the fetal position on the ground as you beat me so severely I will forget my own name.

You are my mother, my father, my child, my best friend, my neighbor, my captor, my murderer, my victim. You meant something to me once and that is all you are now. I do not remember your face and I do not remember your name. All that remains of you is the point at which our lives met. This is the self-centered nature of memory.