Remembering

There's noise in my head -
The predawn twitting of a bird
That slips into my sleep like a warm
Hand beneath my head, raising me up,
Bringing me back to life.

The journey to the past and back
Is long and filled with portholes
And holes where memories should be.
I forget, I forget, I forget everything
That I have lived and breathed for.

Oh! I wish to remember for
In remembering I may seize something -
Something real. Change something -
Something broken and begin again,
Rework an old story into a different ending.

The pictures in my head are edited visions
Of yesterday and the fickle flush
Of parts of me like toilet wastes
Hurts more than the effort to think.
It hurts to be unsure of who I used to be.

When the ground drinks my bones tomorrow,
Will it taste the essence of my memories,
My missing, stolen, borrowed memories?
Will it find in my DNA, the secrets my brain
Seeks to deny like a forbidden history?

Sometimes on the precipice of sleep,
A part of me falls like dew on my skin
And I begin to remember some thing
Like a dream of something real,
Something tangible.

It is like a taste on my tongue,
A song playing on repeat.
It is like a scent in my nostrils,
A soft touch of lips on my eyelids,
The sensation of rising from drowning.

But my eyes opening with the sureness
Of daybreak is broken to see
The memories fall away deformed,
Tendrils clinging to my fingertips
As I try, oh how much I try, to hold on to it.

One day, I'll forget my name,
The shape of my body
And the way back home.
Some day, I'll look at my lover
And ask her who are you?

One day I'll see the blank surprise
In the mirror at not remembering,
Not remembering who I am.
I will stare at the new me and wonder
When he was birthed and what he knows.

My name, my memory, my story
Are set on the shape of my body
But I must tell my story for it to breathe.
I must feed it with spit and words
And I must remember to tell it.

Who will remember me when I'm gone
If I do not tell my story?
Who will tell my story,
If I do not remember me now
In this body that still breathes?

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_{pixabay: Couleur}

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©warpedpoetic, 2019.