I remember a place
Called the office
There were mainly only
Two people there
A “Mommy” and a “Nandat”
And me (I was little then).

We played lots of games
At the office
Mostly with Nandat
While Mommy worked
We had snowball fights
The snowballs were really
Kleenex tied into balls
With rubber bands
And we cut out deer
Paper deer
To play with
And sometimes
Nandat spun me around
In a chair
Saying
Round and round and round she goes
Where she stops nobody knows

We had one game
Where we sat on a couch
(A green couch)
And pretended we were
Watching TV
(Channel 17)

Sometimes we went
To the park
I took my purple ball

One time
Nandat didn’t want to take
The purple ball
Because Nandat
Always ended up carrying
The purple ball
So I said I would carry it
(I couldn’t leave it behind.)

At the playground Nandat
Used to throw my ball
Up into a thing
And the ball would come out
One of the tunnels
Blue
Red
Or yellow
I couldn’t throw high enough
So Nandat threw
And the ball came out
Red
Blue
Or yellow
And then we would catch it

I remember once
We were building a sand castle
Me and Nandat
By sweeping sand
Into a pile
And a boy came along
And said we could make our castle
Into a volcano
If we made a hole
In the top
And when I went away and came back
I saw there was a hole in the top
Of our castle

Why did you make a hole
In our castle?
I asked Nandat
I didn’t
He said
That boy did

I didn’t like the hole
I didn’t want a volcano
But there was the hole
Right in the middle of
Our castle
So then I think we fixed it.

And I remember
Once I was collecting pine cones
But then I discovered
My hands had sap on them
So then someone had to help me clean my hands
(It wasn’t Nandat or Mommy. It was someone else.)
But after she was done, my hands felt soapy.
So after that I didn’t play with pine cones

When I was coming to the office
With Mommy
One time
I found out
That most children
Didn’t come to work
I was very surprised
I thought it wasn’t fair
That in some workplaces
Children aren’t allowed

But then one day
It all stopped
Mommy decided
To work from home
So we stopped going
To the office
I don’t think
I was too sad
We took all the things
Inside the office
(We still have the green couch)
We took the people
And we left

But then
I grew up
I didn’t change very much
In a way
But in a way
I did
And when I grew up
There were some people
Who didn’t really get me
Anymore
I don’t think
They were trying
To not get me
But they didn’t.
We couldn’t interact
The way we used to.
So they changed
The way they interacted.
But this new way
Didn’t really work
They didn’t know me now
They only knew who I was before.
And now I didn’t really get them either

Sometimes I wished I could go back
To the time when we got each other
Sometimes I tried to go back
To the time we knew each other
But it never really worked out.

And I have gone back to the building
And it was strange and rather sad
To see the mall beneath the office
The mall I used to pass so many times
On the way to the park
So familiar
From years ago
Almost more the sensation of familiarity
Than actual memories
The feeling that you’ve been there before
In a dream
Or a long time ago
And then you remember
The office

I don’t miss most of the people
Whom I used to see.
There are only two people I miss
Who are still far away.
An uncle who never quite understood me
And the “Nandat” I used to know