I can’t remember my First Memory

By now, my first memory is only a memory of a memory; a shadow of a shadow as the Buddha says. By now, it has become translated into wall-to-wall sunlight carpeting a plastic toy clip-clopping on concrete back and forth to the front gate of that house my father built with his bare hands and drinking habits with his rolled up check sleeves and his construction buddies who threatened to sell my sister and me to the Gypsies in a burlap sack. Wind sweeps the sidewalk from side to side. Undamaged tree leaves turn cartwheels against the unfinished house. The stairwell is wearing a dark bowtie of oblong shadows. I am pulling a toy behind me: it clicks as the mutton hat and kerchief heads bob. There are intervals of sunlight and clouds. That plastic object scrabbles behind me on a string. I can’t remember any of this, really, but I keep it close to me as a honey-hot feeling.