I know it's silly

You probably don't remember me

Or at least that what's your trying to say

Your face seems confused yet shocked underneath

You've gotten better at acting

but you still wear it like a loose mask

that easily falls off with a simple tug

You say you don't know me

but I know you do

You,

who forced yourself to forget me

must have finally discovered

that people can never be intentionally forgotten

If anything,

that only makes you remember them more

There are two ways to forget someone:

1) The Hard Way: don’t see, write or call them again.

2) The Easier Way: get to know them a bit better

© Wendy Cope.

You knew what you were doing, even by the third date. Your treatment of us shamed me, your lazy messages and bruising silence wiped out by your smile. Confident all would be well with an apology, you say sorry again. Is that fifty apologies now in three months? I could say ‘literally’.

I accept your words though, devising another unspoken excuse on your behalf, an implicit envoy unspoken but needed.

What makes you so brutal? Right now I think you are happy to live in the moment, trusting that my understanding and responsiveness will continue. You aren’t wrong. It does.

Maybe you will change in time, the worse you behave. A rock bottom must be reached.

After those three days isolating me after that night, I fell into drink and daytime sleep. You returned my calls and apologised. This time I mourned, but felt foolish to be mourning a carcass of love that was us.

Then we started again.

I woke up today and realised I wasn't mouring us, but instead lamenting a vision. But what a beautiful vision! We lived by the beach and bought that B&B you wanted. I spoke to you just now and felt for the first time how unlike my vision we ever were.

You are not even bad.

You are just you, and I’ve got to know you a bit better.

Two souls deeply intertwined

His touch assured me

Overwhelmed with affection

Push away

Distance yourself

Leave

I need him

I’m scared to love

I don’t want anyone else

Through my eyes

I see a beautiful soul

Can’t be apart longer than 24 hours

Utterly fascinated by the other

He told me he loved me

I said it back

I’m scared to love

You can’t become attached

He will leave you

Push away

Distance yourself

Leave him

He is broken

Torn down

She won’t let me love her

Ignores my calls

He can’t see me again

It’s the only way he can move on

I regret it all

Causing pain was not my intention

I am scared to love

A year goes by

Been so long since I’ve heard your voice

I miss your smile

You’re on my mind everyday

I drink to numb the pain

Don’t want these boys attention

They aren’t you

Find myself in a new relationship

I don’t love him

I won’t look at him the way I looked at you

Not your eyes

She clung to me, her scent in my sheets, her hair in my fingers, the sun ever burning my retinas how could I possibly forget that? When I close my eyes an afterimage of her still lingers. I push her away, out of my mind. Bury myself in work.

The feeling of her warm skin against mine, her solid body a smooth perfectly fitting puzzle piece against my own, a comfort. Again I push it away, the ghost sensation that still haunts me.

I find myself, thinking about our inside jokes, they whisper and tug at me, I walk through the isles of the grocery store thinking about what you liked to eat, the little jokes you'd make. I swat the thoughts away like flies.

You still murmur in the back of my head, I lack clarity because of it, I go on dates, the hazy, uninterested smiles of attractive men can't compare to the way you used to look at me, your moonbeam face still watches me from the booths behind their heads.

I'm with someone new now, Your name still lingers on my tongue when I say theirs aloud, but I can't hear your laugh when they begin to giggle, I begin to forget.

Memories are like broken glass.

You look through them to see an image of what was, but the pieces are fractured, fragmented, and threatening to fall to pieces with the faintest gust of wind. In each little piece you see your reflection, each with a different angle and a different light. Through them all you see a complete picture, but through each jagged shard you see a scene, a snippet of events long past. Finite edges scraping against one another, bounding your frame of reference in a spiderweb of damages.

As time wears on, the chips and shards fall from the frame, each taking with it two more until all that's left are the pieces jutting out from the timeworn frame like bones from a compound wound. Signs that there was once a complete lens inside that has been torn apart by wind and water and time.

You can try to remove them, but with the slightest touch they will mar your skin and slice through the sinew and drip sticky red blood from the cut until each little mirror, each little window, is stained with your pain.

Best not to touch. Leave them alone, let time take its course, and let them fall from their frame and be forgotten upon the ground where you no longer see the world through their lens. Maybe they will be seen, but only if you go looking. Maybe they will be held, but not without a gasp of pain before they are once more relegated to the dirt.

I see you in my thoughts, I see you in my dreams

I see you in my coffee mug, three sugars, two creams

I see you in my memories, I wish I didn't though,

The thought of your touch on my lips,

I wish to let it go

I can't erase your shape

deep inside my mind,

the sound of your simple voice

the deep but quiet kind

I hate my name on the tip of your tounge

I hate it in your brain

I hate the way I love you

even though you bring me pain

I wanna forget you, erase you're name from the corners of my mind, but I can't you're in my memories, the things we were both fond of, the things we shared. You're on my Facebook, in old photos I rarely look at but I know are there, you're in my subconsciou, you existed and as long as someone existed you can never really forget.

you probably won’t remember me soon

one day i won’t cross your mind

you’ll forget our good times and all of the bad

it’s only a matter of time

i’ll always remember you though

each day you’ll cross my mind

i could never forget the good times or bad

however much i may try