lucky year no. 3
his memory no longer stings
like it once used to
the pain
surface level now
the loss no longer
debilitating
perhaps that’s the most beautiful thing about love-
how it always finds a place
to nestle itself into
and turns dark spaces
into halos.
He was enough
just the way he was
the day he helped me plant my first sunflower
and as if speaking to the child inside me
he told me to not be scared for the worms
as I dug my shovel into the clumps of soil,
putting all their lives in peril.
And I remember smiling at the fact that
we could yell at each other
and then spend the rest of the day’s light
playing in the dirt
together.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”
I finally understand that saying now, how life can break you just to remake you- stronger, wiser, aware of the beauty in my own breath and the importance of love.
And still.
The last 365 days without you to share my accomplishments and failures with have been the hardest. I have no regrets of things left unsaid like so many others because my words always belonged to you. And the ones I kept locked away you read in my eyes. But what do I do with my words now?
I wish you were still here so I could tell you how much you changed my life, how your love gave me strength, how I finally learned to see myself with your eyes. But the only thing left to do now is remember, celebrate the years of life you had by drinking your favorite IPA. And it all still doesn’t make any sense. You were once a lover but forever my best friend. You challenged me to be better but loved me at my worst, and among all of the things I still don’t understand are your unwavering faith in me and neverending love. You were my soulmate and I was yours, no matter what, we decided. You made me angry, you disappointed me at times, and you were awful with directions and going to bed instead of falling asleep on the couch. And yet. The mornings when you brought me coffee in bed and danced with me on top of your feet in the kitchen and hid from the world underneath piles of blankets in our own grown-up fort and held me close to your heart the first time I let you see me cry and told me it would all be alright… THAT’S what I remember when I think of you now.
I remember you and I remember love.
But I still hate the fact that all I can do is remember. All I can do now is sit here, drinking your favorite beer and writing honest words you’ll never read.
365 days later and I still feel everything.
Remember the record player? the record player you bought two years after I had been telling you how much I wanted one. The same one you purchased two months after our love broke. Perhaps so you could still keep a piece of me, there against the window, soaking up the stream of sunlight that used to dance across your wooden floors and my lap; perhaps just as bait to bring me back. Remember how you bought it broken, just to have it fixed? And how, even after months of playing Ryan Adams, I couldn’t figure out for the life of me just how to turn it on. So I would plea for help- sweets! my voice echoed along the corridors of your apartment. You always listened. So I learned to sing to you: And you and I were dancing in the dirty rain, my voice would carry over the words, and in the kitchen, with my feet placed on top of yours and my arms around your neck, that day we danced the first dance we’d never get to have.
There are good days and bad days
but the last two
have been the latter
tea and words and tears
for breakfast
and a flood of memories my mind
hasn’t remembered in a while
I want to be able to say more
than just I miss him
when they sit beside me
concern flooding their eyes when they notice
my tear-stained face
but I have no words
to explain the insufferable longing
here in my heart
except for
Saudade
the tongue of my motherland
suddenly
comfort seems so distant
a dream my mind must have made up
to get me through today
and then tomorrow
and the day after that
because when life breaks you this way
it’s either live one day at a time
or die.
The in-betweens we create disappear
you learn there’s only yes and no
I will and I won’t
I want you or I don’t
good days and bad
but the last two have been the latter
definitely.
Maybes no longer exist in my world.
here you are again,
welcome
take a seat and tell me-
what is it that you want me to remember today?
the time we hiked three hours through a costa rican jungle
or the last time I kissed his lips?
You almost make me feel them again
purple and cold
my tears run free as you sit
quietly
telling me all the stories I’ve tried to forget.
Some days
I still wish I could
see myself through your eyes,
even if just once more
It’s not enough
to know that once upon a time
you loved me
as much as you would ever love
anyone
and the photographs that once spoke a thousand words
hide away quietly in boxes
waiting for the day
when the memory of your face
won’t make me
crumble inside.
It’s weird how memories fade.
Where do they go when they leave?
Up above beyond the clouds? Or do they just hang down below instead?
Underneath the dirt of our dirty soles,
our tired souls…
Who can no longer remember the curve of smiles, the scents left behind in the imaginary trail our bodies made?
To where exactly do our memories fade? And who can say how fast?
Why are some ghosts of our pasts still here, and the others long gone,
Far enough away from our minds that we no longer know who’s alive and who’s really dead. No, not anymore. Not these days.
Where do memories go when they fade?
And what if they stayed instead?
The distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
I find myself staring out into the endless ocean, looking right at the bright blue line that divides sea and sky. I remember the past year as parts that are so enjoined with the present that I confuse myself.
We’re told our whole lives not to dwell in the past. But if there is no distinction between past, present, and future, then to forget the past is to simply forget ourselves, forget who we are.
So when I sit lazily by the sea, I dive right into my memories- all the good ones I keep stored in a little treasure box in my brain. I pull them out as if trying on a new dress, turning them this way and that to appreciate their beauty. I let them teach me who I’ve been and who I’ll always be. Sometimes during this process, tears that weren’t spilled when they should’ve been come find their place on my cheeks.
It’s wonderful to be alone with my memories and the sea. It’s wonderful to see time as continuous, and past events as ones that were never, and will never, be kept solely in the past. They are here on these waves, on the hot sand, under the shade of the umbrella and over the pedestrian walkway. Your name is written with seashells on the shore, your face sculpted in the clouds, and your voice… a quiet whisper I hear in every crashing wave.
