Memento

I wake up and you are still here.

You, of course, being something I can't touch,

a feeling, maybe. A high school crush on forever.

You, of course, are not really a you, but an us,

something I can't touch; a promise

to someone, of something. What it is about

I can't remember. What it is all about I can never

remember.

You are filled with every good day I've ever had

and every good day I never will. Your body bursts

with all the things I didn't get to do

because I was lying in bed, or crying in the shower,

or scared of what strangers would think of me.

When you smile, your teeth bare courage, click-clacking

with the memories of speeding down the highway and turning down

an invitation to a very, very quiet concert.

I can't tear myself into two neat pieces to hate and love you all the same,

I want to pick the meat off the bones and take all the parts I'm grateful for,

leaving you a skeleton carcass that gloats about everything that passed me by.

You, though, are not a meal and I am not a vulture.

I cannot separate the memento from the mori

which, still, leaves me with two choices.

Pretend none of it ever happened,

or accept the whole impossibly beautiful, unimaginably ugly thing.

November 2020