I was looking for a cassette tape

the one where I am learning
to repeat the alphabet
after my father

and where one older brother is yelling
out encouragements to me
to pull the hair of another
even older brother

I thought it was in the black
dust-topped, snapped-together
cardboard box perched atop my bookcase

but that only contained:
the Lion King soundtrack
one Chinese artists mixtape
a radio top 40 countdown
and my first, forgotten
oral history interview of
my mother, from 1994

I had wanted to hear
some words from my past
and instead found stories
from a time before that