Author's Note
Memory Off began at the end.
The last line came first — two words, borrowed from a settings menu. Memory off. I didn't know yet whose memory, or why it mattered. But I knew the poem lived there, and that everything else would have to earn it.
Writing backwards meant asking a different question. Not what happens? but what has to be true for this ending to land?
Every image, every stanza, every missed exit existed to make those two words inevitable.
The ending accumulated meaning as the poem built towards it. By the final line, memory off belongs to at least three things at once — a choice, a kind of forgiveness, a clean slate. A father who decided to forget his judgments and sit on the floor. And a son who quietly stopped keeping score.
None of that was planned. It was discovered by working backwards, one question at a time.