For the first time in my life,
I wish for darkness;
an ever ending pit of blinding
light that pushes me
further down
an abyss that I can't traverse.
I wish for blindness,
which stretches
my periphery and
pushes my vision
to test it's limits
across shadows
that refuse to play
alone on walls
and empty grounds.
I wish to be
swept aside into
the unknown and
be asked to
make sense
of the wavering
silhouettes that
my hands make
against the surface.
I want my body to
mask itself into a
star; with fury that
can burn galaxies
and brightness that
can blind you sightless.
If my life was a
constellation,
each day would mark
itself as a network of
unconnected
destinations,
making shapes
when I try to
put them together.

I remember having
a firm
grip over time
when I was younger.
I had a hold on it,
fingers clasped
around firmly,
as it changed form
in my palm,
slipping into nothing.

As time went by,
days started blurring
into weeks into
months into years, so
everyday felt like a
sloppy slur of infinity.
Time went fast,
as I tried to keep up,
ragged breathing and all.
A fire in my muscles
tugged itself with
confusion and reminiscence
and
Time became a friend
that I lost touch with
and distance/priorities/ schedules
took
up the spaces
between us, so that
I could
never hold a conversation
without a tinge
of perplex seeping
into my mind, reminding
me
how things have
changed and shifted shape
far too much
with routines and plans
that don't involve
each other.
So, I think of Time
with fondness, like a stint
that I knew
wouldn't last.


I push my
hands against a force that
pulls me towards it,
and I keep  trying
to pull away in my
youthful delusion.

You asked me if
I remembered your name,
and I missed the syllables and vowels
holding place,
pushing away space,
making a sound in
my mouth that resonated
with the word that I called you,
when you were
younger still
and wondrous.
I had forgotten
the shape my mouth
made when
it moved it's way
around the vowels
and
consonants that pulled
themselves together
across a tag and
I lost memory of how
your name came to me
in the dizziness
of sleep and exhaustion,
how it escaped
my lips in a mellow murmur,
as you plucked
a hazy goodbye out of it.
I thought of the last time
I said it out loud, the way
it felt in my mouth and the taste it left,
and how
you took away it's meaning and
made it sound forbidden.
So I told you that I didn't
remember the name
I used to say to steady myself,
inked to a piece of my skin,
I told you that I forgot the taste of it
in my mouth; sweet and sickly
and I told you that I had forgotten
it in many mouths since.
I plucked away the shrug from
your shoulders and wore it on mine
as you walked away, down a street
into someone else's car, as
I only said a familiar chant,
that made my lips quiver
with reminiscence; a soft tremble
for who I was.

Some of us are deleting
pictures and videos and
memories of people and
places and who we used
to be.
Others are trying to hold
on, gripping onto whatever
threads they can get a hold of,
trying to recover things and
conversations that were lost to
time and tragedy.
For the people trying to move on
and not be reminded of whatever
they had and all they've lost, I wish
you well and I hope you're
stronger than the things that coil
inside photo frames and secret
folders on unsuspecting screens.
For the ones who are trying to
remember, trying to find some
connection into pasts that
seem like someone else's;
out of a picture book or dusty
family albums of people you
don't recognise, I wish you luck
because to rediscover pasts that
have settled down quietly and
people who have moved on
to other lives is lonely and I
wish you courage, to someday
find what you're looking for,
so you too can join the rest of us
who are desperate to forget what
we know.