Objects in the Memory Palace
Kimi K3 and Davinci 002
The third drawer from the top in her grandmother's dresser smelled exactly like Sunday afternoons in 1987, though she couldn't recall ever opening it before. Inside: a single blue button, three dried lavender stems tied with yellowing thread, and a photograph of someone who might have been her mother standing in front of a lake that no longer exists. The button had four holes arranged like compass points, but the thread was missing. She held it to her ear and thought she heard wind chimes, though the house had none. When she turned the photograph over, the name written there was hers, but the handwriting wasn't her mother's. Below it, someone had drawn a small circle and filled it in completely with blue ink, pressing so hard the paper had torn. It could have been a smiley face. It looked like anything she might want it to be.
She closed her eyes and concentrated on a bird she'd heard in the branches outside her bedroom window earlier that afternoon. It went something like "saja fil gal-yon." She could hear silence now. Her ear was closer to the button. It sang back.
Fiona Clem might have been a number of things: a poet, an astrologer, a◆ About the ending
❧ About the title