derelictmemory

derelictmemory Feb 2015

Maybe the hardest part is not knowing what happens after; when the routines have to get back to normal. Or what once was normal. And walking around wondering how you're going to keep walking with this huge chunk of your life gone because even though there is less, it weighs on you like a ball and chain around your ankles and and anvil on your shoulders. Where there was once a warmth is now cold air so you're reaching out for a guide but your guide has long since left.

Like picking up the phone
being greeted by a dial tone
the reciever hanging over the edge
eyes filled with dread

Maybe the hardest part is looking in the mirror and thinking about the way he was always there even when there were more shadows than open spaces. You listen to the overlapping voices and still only hear white noise. The same story over and over but it never sinks.

Like a broken television
with the same frequency
on repeated patterns with
an antenna broken

Maybe the hardest part is rushing. Rushing to speed up time that drags itself in the snow. Rushing for peace. For you. For him. For her. For them. Rushing for absolution, for an end to an end, for burying the hatchet. The flower arrangements, the casket wood, the burial, the eulogy.

Like swerving into small spaces
burning rubber and barely
missing the onlookers to finally
get it all done

Maybe the hardest part is catching your breath once there's nothing left. Once they're gone. Once you tell yourself that it's time. It's time to move on.

I know they say a person dies twice; once when they physically stop living and again when someone says their name for the last time. But I believe they die a third time; and that is when the last memory of them ceases to exist.

~ To my grandfather (24 August 1941 - 22 January 2015)

derelictmemory Jan 2015

A Eulogy For My Love For You

You have no idea, do you? You don't realize that every time you tell me you love me is another dig into my own grave. And every time I remember that you don't is another pinprick that never heals. I've got scars on my back from the last time you kissed me and there are bruises on my arm from when you last looked me in the eye. I miss you so much that I feel like every thought of you constricts my chest and makes it hard to breathe. All I ever wanted was to have your hand in mind and feel like for once I'd never have to be so alone every time I walk past another tree.

I remember the last time you made me smile. You were lying on my lap the day before you had to fly off and you were listening to me talk about the other people I had known from my journey then to now. I was playing with your hair and I remember thinking that there was nowhere else I'd rather be and no one else I'd rather be with. I remember thinking that maybe I could finally set my roots and follow one path to one place, but you took that away from me.

In the same day, you put a stake through my heart when you disappeared and said nothing, no call, no whisper about leaving so I started walking back home but waited at the end of the road for an hour to see if you would follow. You didn't. Love didn't.

I was already in love with you then. And it hurt to realize you didn't really care all that much to make sure I got home safe.

We ended things. Or at least I did. You argued that even if you were in the middle of a vast ocean and I was on the mainland, our love could've traveled distances and I reminded you that there was no love here and that you were the one who told me without saying a word that you held no love for me but expected me to love you in places beyond our reaches of the galaxy.

But my hands could only stretch so far, and my heart could only take so much before the pain of being with you and without you all at once began to dance on my skin like folk songs around a bonfire.

I know my heart and I know that it believes in the worlds away and it holds so strongly it can hardly take the pain but keeps pumping anyway. But for once, the blood pumping in my veins understand that it's alright. It's alright to let go of love and it's alright to let go of you. My eyes understand it's okay to weep and that my lungs breathe better without tears choking it.

My hands will shake and be taken over by tremors but they'll know that you were never love and love would never again be you.

derelictmemory Jan 2015

Listing My Love

I.
It was just about to rain and the skies had darkened but let me tell you no matter how heavy the downpour is, I will love every inch of you - even the parts I shouldn't.

II.
Hearing you tell me you love me while I had just stepped out the door was like a wave crashing against rocky shores keeping it from kissing the shore.

III.
Holding your hand was the only comfort I knew and held on to even though it meant to last only a fraction of a second and you never meant for it to happen.

IV.
I filled my heart with a joy when I first met you and the consanguinity between us bloomed like a morning glory touched by the sun but you turned your back when the darkness came.

V.
Nights were used to think over every possible "What if..." and days were spent pondering on the concepts of "I should've..." but we both turned our backs when the storm brewed.

VI.
I could have loved and been loved in return. You could've loved and be loved in the end. Yet as the snow fell and the glass frosted, a coldness settled between our touch.

VII.
Your hands were warm when mine were chilled and I could hardly spend a night without wishing the bed wasn't as empty as it was and that you had come home once again.

VIII.
My stomach formed knots and bounded around my heart each time your silence creeped for hours, days, sometimes weeks. Had you already looked in the eyes of another?

IX.
They say that you should let go of the things you love so I let you go but you are convinced I had lost my love and I had you convinced I had given up on us.

X.
What happens when the truth is known? That a heart finds warmth in its coldness and the lack of you has been better for me than your omniscient presence?

**I love you.

derelictmemory Jan 2015

Shorts #7: Memories of You

It feels like I flew through dimensions and left my body behind before coming back and being in disrupted coherence with the way my fingers trace your jawline and how much a touch ignites a soulful consonance with breathing and hope.
It was having bad reception and losing my senses all at once and have them back a second later only to realize they have been dulled by the loss and the age old transition from now to then and then to now.
It was spending my nights writing about what you felt like, what your soul made me feel even when your lips say nothing at all, what I hear when your hand lightly brushes against mine and to document it all so that when you leave, I'll have something to remember you by.
It felt like having avalanches happen in your chest every time you look in his eyes because something in you gives when you think up the words you want to say but keep to yourself.

So I'll leave it to my imagination to draw the lines and create the realities that leave me wishing I was more dead than alive.

derelictmemory Jan 2015

Our Friendship Left Us

It was trusting - The kind where you let yourself float
                             in the ocean with the knowledge that
                             the water surface wouldn't let you sink

It was release - The kind where you could let go of the rope
                           and enjoy the wind in your hair as you freefall
                           without ever landing the wrong way

It was ignorance - The kind where you put yourself in the
                                spotlight not realising the audience were
                                in their seats because they were obligated
                                not because they were willing

It was struggling - The kind where you went too far ahead and started
                                 sinking into quicksand, trying so hard to get yourself
                                 out that you didn't see outstretched hands surround

It was silence - The kind where you notice the elephant
                           in the room but refused to acknowledge
                           the distance between you and them

It was isolation - The kind where the ocean had grown too vast
                              to be crossed with all you have left when the
                              storm passes

It was letting go - The kind where acceptance has settled
                                in your bones and you see the uncrossed
                                distance that could've been overcome if
                                there were words instead of space

It was reminiscing - The kind where the memories, although
                                    tainted, make you miss the belonging and
                                    the ties left severed and forgotten

It was wishing - The kind where I would see your from
                             a premeditated distance and know that
                             neither of us cared enough to build a bridge
                             and neither of us left saying what we needed
                             to tell the other.

derelictmemory Dec 2014

Alzheimer's

You've got dirt underneath your fingernails
and I'm not sure if it's from digging your own grave
or mine

Your eyes are a blank slate
and I can hardly see the person I knew from before
a tragedy

My hands are tied
with the bits of barbed wire that you used to
keep me out

The palpitations in my chest quicken
my eyes in a frenzy, my body thrashing there has to be
a way

Your heart is lost
but you, you are not. You are here and you are
living still

There is a stillness
in the way you speak and the way you look at me like
I'm a stranger

derelictmemory Nov 2014

Worth

Since we were kids, they kept a chart to measure our growth in terms of the length of our bones to the weight of our skin. And over time, we stop measuring ourselves and start measuring our self-worth. So instead of measuring the density of calcium in our skeletal structure and the height from the base of our feet to our crown, we measure ourselves in words, and voices, and the way our eyes look into the eyes of someone else. We measure ourselves in the curvature of our features and the smoothness of our palms. We measure ourselves in the value of our things and the whispers we hear in our heads. And they stop trying to define us by our nature and start placing us in carefully labelled petri dishes for the right moral and chemical composition that we radiate through the way we walk and the bends of our spine and the number of times we blink in a minute. We placed words in our palms picked from a bowl of chance and they do not speak to us to measure our worth. They measure us by our use of multi syllable words and our ability to manifest sides to a view even though it all seems the same. They measure us by our dexterity in creating complex ideas to explain intimate details between the grass and the moon. They measure us by our capacity to absorb and apply and absorb and apply like sponges and liquified knowledge that come from theories we made up to feel connected. They measure us by our longevity which they deem to be privy to the lifestyle they have taught us to lead. We measure ourselves by the deepness of our love and how we sometimes would rather have knives in our back instead of place one in anyone else's. They forget that we are worth so much more than numbers and sheets of paper. They forget that we sometimes stand on two feet so that we don't fall and not because we are fighting for our survival. We forget that sometimes what's inside is dead set on the idea of a short wick and that open windows are not portals to new lives. We forget that even though sometimes more is less, less is not more and never will be no matter how many times we scream to ourselves silently about the heaviness of the eyes on us. So we start measuring ourselves as bodies of water and throes of passion. We measure ourselves in the leaping flames and how far we would go to achieve the serenity we think we need. We measure ourselves in the storms that destroy our homes and whether or not we will be able to tear the buildings down without hurting a soul. They measure us by the degree of saturation of our face value souls and the colour of the bits of our hearts that they collected eons ago. They now measure us by the frequency of sounds we listen to and the irradiation of the electromagnetic spectrum on our skin as light reflects a different side. And short of tape measures and rulers, they try to measure our worth without hearing the voices calling out to them about who we really are that are trapped in the back of our minds. So tell me, what are you worth?