Memories are the stones in my pockets weighing me down as I walk into the interminable ocean.
Where there should be fond recollections of my laughter and playing in the yard,
live etchings of dread; a relentless foreboding.
Sometimes memory isn't a specific scene,
sometimes it's a guilt that envelopes you in a sick, nostalgic way.
A guilt so familiar it almost feels like home.
Sometimes it's a scent that takes me back to the house on 3rd st, sometimes it's a sound that brings me to the blue house on Allen.
It's the caldo de pollo with too much cumin.
It's the shattered mirror on our shared bedroom floor, it's the color of the dried blood on the discolored bathroom door.
It's the sound of me and my sister begging her dad to stop beating our older sister, time and time again; how many times did our throats go raw from pleading?
And why am I cursed to keep reliving it?
What sin did I commit to deserve the burden of survival? What am I paying for?
What horrors has my brain locked away if this already isn't bad enough to forget?
Am I doomed to have the good times become grains of sand slipping through my fingers for as long as I am cursed to roam the earth in this lamentable body?
When I look back, will there only be wretched stains where I know there should be reminders of love and kindness?
I want the “good times” to stay burned into my mind like everything else does,
Is that really so much to ask? I suppose so.
For now, I will hoard small momentos of the “good times” movie tickets, receipts, doodles done in passing and anything else.
For now, I will quietly envy the forgetful.