15 tapes over 15 years, moments and
occasions, vacations and holidays,
one per year in 60 minutes or less.

I took them to a little shop downtown
and got them back as DVD’s,
then I gave them to you at Christmas.

I kept copies for myself
but I have yet to watch them
for fear of forgetting the reasons
it all went to hell.

You told me that you often get confused
between what's real and what's on TV
and about whether the events you remember

are actually being remembered,
or are they just being recalled from
watching the DVDs?

Maybe that’s why you
don’t remember the same
**** as me.

Maybe you believe that if it’s not in
those home movies then it must not be real,
and therefore never really happened.

What you are not realizing is that everything
in those home movies is a wanted memory.
There are no jagged edges and
no accidental recordings,

no scenes of betrayal,
no secret relations,
no sordid behavior,
obsessive compulsions,
no sick fascinations,
her ephebophilia*,
no lack of affection,
no painful rejection,
no moral transgressions,
no threats of her leaving,
no demon possession.

instead

what you see in those movies is just
a compilation of best behavior.

The absolute truth is that you live with an
evil so dark that you question your sanity,
as I did for so many years.

The juxtaposition of  
her sensational gas-lighting^ with
the pleasantness of your DVD
dominated memory has caught you in
the vacuum of her black hole.

When you exist within the proximity of
such overbearing darkness you tend to
attempt to create your own light to live by,

but your light will never be bright enough
until you create space between it and
her vacuum that constantly snuffs it out..

Just know that I will always love you

and all I ask is that you take note of who it is
behind the camera lens of those memories,
and who it is that created them for you,

and maybe one day you'll understand all of this,

because I know that I don't.