At the Mercy of my Own Forgetting
Published in the May 2019 issue of The Write Launch Literary Magazine
poetry
Declares the forgetting man
under the florescent lights
his face shadowless
in a shadowed world
that he knows where it is
once and for all.
His Mountain Dew overflows
all down the cupboards below
the soda station
a fountain of oblivious distress.
He lays ghosts at his feet
who mumble and beg for permanent rest.
“Don’t forget a tasty treat” he expels
and he waves toward me and
a rack of Funyuns
his Butterfly tattooed arm
branding me a forgetter too.
I am stunned that I have neglected to
anticipate Butterflies all this time and
that her voice is more than a bunch
of tiny oxide particles
embedded on a
long strand
of polyester.
“Don’t shift things about” the forgetting man insists
but I did this very thing last year when we moved
and until this Butterfly moment
I thought that I had vanished her forever.
Her Wisconsin ‘yahs”, her shit the bed comments,
her voice.
Declares the forgetting man
under the florescent lights
his face shadowless in a shadowed world
that he knows where it is
once and for all.
More Mountain Dew surrenders itself
at his feet in pools of ice.
I abandon his isle.
The ghosts he lays at his feet
scream at me,
“Don’t forget a tasty snack!”
A smile claims my lips
as he whoops
his warning, “Don’t shift things about!”
I know I’ll find
her tucked away
in the Butterfly box at the back
of my nightstand drawer wedged next
to the dream in which
she insisted that I would be okay
as long as I don’t search
for things unbearably gone
or waste away at the mercy
of my own forgetting.
Written during an incident at the Circle K in which I remembered where I had stored the cassette tape of me interviewing my Nana for a family history project just weeks before she died in a car accident.
At the Mercy of my Own Forgetting
Published in the May 2019 issue of The Write Launch Literary Magazine
poetry
Declares the forgetting man
under the florescent lights
his face shadowless
in a shadowed world
that he knows where it is
once and for all.
His Mountain Dew overflows
all down the cupboards below
the soda station
a fountain of oblivious distress.
He lays ghosts at his feet
who mumble and beg for permanent rest.
“Don’t forget a tasty treat” he expels
and he waves toward me and
a rack of Funyuns
his Butterfly tattooed arm
branding me a forgetter too.
I am stunned that I have neglected to
anticipate Butterflies all this time and
that her voice is more than a bunch
of tiny oxide particles
embedded on a
long strand
of polyester.
“Don’t shift things about” the forgetting man insists
but I did this very thing last year when we moved
and until this Butterfly moment
I thought that I had vanished her forever.
Her Wisconsin ‘yahs”, her shit the bed comments,
her voice.
Declares the forgetting man
under the florescent lights
his face shadowless in a shadowed world
that he knows where it is
once and for all.
More Mountain Dew surrenders itself
at his feet in pools of ice.
I abandon his isle.
The ghosts he lays at his feet
scream at me,
“Don’t forget a tasty snack!”
A smile claims my lips
as he whoops
his warning, “Don’t shift things about!”
I know I’ll find
her tucked away
in the Butterfly box at the back
of my nightstand drawer wedged next
to the dream in which
she insisted that I would be okay
as long as I don’t search
for things unbearably gone
or waste away at the mercy
of my own forgetting.
Written during an incident at the Circle K in which I remembered where I had stored the cassette tape of me interviewing my Nana for a family history project just weeks before she died in a car accident.
