I could find them. The few faceless children

whose names I've sewn into my mind.

My childhood is so shaken, shattered and reassembled in my memory that I don't know the number of elementary schools I attended. I want to say nine. But there may be more. I can recite the names of four.

With a few clicks on Facebook, I could paste adult faces to those faint names — some of which I've forgotten how to spell.

I could ask them questions:

What do you remember (if anything) about the small Asian girl who interrupted your life for a handful of months and then without a word (always without a word) vanished?

I could also hunt for my father's criminal records, my love once suggested. They're accessible to the public.

Arrests were made in Illinois, California and Wisconsin. This much I know. The details, the hearings, the sentences and even the prison facility have all been trampled by a hundred interpretations and lies since then. 

You feel a lot of emotion, the love said. (He means guilt.) But maybe that's because you don't have all the facts. You only have the scraps other emotional people — such as your father — have given you. Maybe the facts will help you settle your mind. ( — your guilt.)

My youngest sister was only seven when most of it simmered down. But my other sister is only thirteen months younger than I am. My Irish twin. She remembers more than I do, I can tell. She harbors twice as much anger and hurt.

I bet she could tell you the name of every elementary school. I wonder whether she could tell you why or how we left each one.

Two summers ago, while driving my car back from New York to Los Angeles, I paused for a few days in the northern suburbs of Chicago. To visit the passenger's family.

Many of the street names and buildings sent harsh bolts through my brain. Less like memory, more like shouting: "Yes, yes, this is ringing a bell. But WHICH fucking bell??"

I want to do my research. (Need to.) One of the items on my bucket list of things to tackle before I turn 30 is to drive through various patches of Illinois to excavate my childhood.

But I can't do that yet. Not until my first book is published.

The manuscript for that book is done. It's been done. And it's been prowling around for a home.

Every time I attempt to edit that manuscript, it winces like a woman — a woman not exquisitely beautiful, but confident in her own right — forced onto a plastic surgeon's table.

I remember little from my life before age 12. I admit this on page 5. The manuscript is gorged with the emotions of a young woman who has few facts and a lot of imagination. The guilt is obvious. The love, also.

I fear that once I research my facts, I will want to shred that manuscript and begin from scratch. I will hate every word. Hate how willingly I set limitations on my knowledge. Hate how much I didn't know when I wrote those words.

But the poems are done. A healthy number of them are swishing around in the published universe. And I need to let them go.

They're not mine to keep handcuffed. They're not mine to gas to death.

So, God, Universe, first book judges, small presses, whoever: This is the real reason I'm begging you to publish my book.

I need you to take it away from me. I need to continue the rest of my life.