You can forgive
You cannot forget.
And when you cannot forget,
You rethink, you remind yourself
How it hurt you.
How it betrayed you.
How it made you believe,
That everything was okay now.

Can you really forgive
That which you cannot forget?
That which you do not allow yourself to let go of?
When you say you have forgiven,
Whose conscience are you setting free?
Why do you forgive?
Why did you forgive?
When you are reminded of your own agony
Again and again, with the same person
Walking by everyday,
Spending each day with you
In the name of family, friendship, love, marriage,
How are YOU sure that you have forgiven
So as to not allow a new rise
To that which you have forgiven
And put aside?

What is it that convinces you
That you can forgive
That you have forgiven
That you can move on from?

What is it that assures you
That once you've forgiven,
YOU will be okay,
That you are ready to move forward,
That you know will not affect you anymore?

“Love is short, forgetting is so long.” –Pablo Neruda*

close your eyes, keep them closed.
take an ice pick
and blind yourself to any reminders
of his flyaway hair or wrinkled jeans.
pour antifreeze on the memory
of the way he used to stroke your arm
before the kiss, and the cauliflower soup
he brought over when your dog was hit by a car,
and your eyes were swollen shut from crying, and
you wouldn’t get out of bed.
Keep a bottle of ***** nearby
to numb the area as you carve yourself
into a shape he hasn’t seen, skin
he hasn’t touched.
don’t breathe
until you’ve lost enough brain cells
to feel something again.
when you no longer see him in the face
of the cashier at the supermarket, when
you no longer recognize your reflection
in the tinted windows of an all-too-familiar white
sedan, you’ll know that you’ve finally done something
right.

I guess I missed the emptiness you left behind,
how it felt like it was everything that mattered;
that soul-crushing, heart-wrenching weight.

I was terrified of letting go of what remained—
the sadness that slowly cracked me open;
because I’m afraid.
I’m afraid of not feeling.
I’m afraid of being happy again.
I’m afraid to forget.

I was desperate to hold onto a piece of you,
so I clung to these memories instead,
because we all know the painful ones
are so much easier to keep.

And even on my most
forgetful days
days when I can’t remember
what happened in an Austen novel
nor the last time I thought
of others before myself
you are still a poem
on those forgetful days
that I memorized several years ago
perched on the sill of my tongue
waiting
like birds
to take off into a
disinterred sky
waiting to be recited before a
disinterested crowd.

The sound of your voice,
inside of my mind

and the way that you laugh,
wide smiled; opened eyed

and your fingers entangling
themselves between mine

and your strong arms around me
holding me from behind

and the feel of your hair
paired with honest eyes

and the taste of your lips,
touched upon mine

and the rest of my skin always
somewhere to reside

and I’m scared, actually-
I’m ******* petrified

that soon I won’t
be able to remind

myself of how you look
sound asleep, by my side

and that maybe over time
we might forget everything

about one another,
all together.

Forgetting how good I have it
Abusing my advantages, an insult
to those who believe in me
Perhaps I'm not meant to be
what I want to be...

I think I have a problem
Oh primeval instinct, take from me
what I've worked for
Take what I've dreamed to achieve

A beer for breakfast a bud for tea
Screaming in my head the hilarious
irony of; "why does it always rain on me?!"
Smiling forever because I'm a joke

I dream of writing a book about my life
Consistently fictional, to seem to the reader as though it is as dark as it feels
But I can't write as the curtain closes