Her hair is thick, slightly coarse. It sticks to my fingers just a little when I run my hands through; a soft linen flow, instead of a fine silk. She's utterly unselfconscious, and I'm absolutely enamored.

Her lips never really need colors, and makeup is something she uses out of habit instead of necessity. My favorite times are when she steps from the shower, wrapped in a towel. Her brown and sandy-colored hair is wet to black, and it streaks back along her skull, reminding me of the dancers from Simply Irresistible.

But she's prettier.

The towel drops to the floor, and she's forever caught in a pose as my mind snapshots. She's almost a ballerina, hand outstretched to the mattress, one knee up, one foot grounded, toes flexed, frozen in my mind in the act of climbing into bed.

Waiting for me.

Her skin is bronze and her eyes a deep brown. Her teeth are perfectly white, straight, grinning. She looks back at me looking at her as she climbs and we both fall.

I slide up next to her, contrasting her earth tones with my stark white. She laughs at the ticklish spot on her neck and the smell of her is more than soap and shampoo and her arms wrap me and want me and hold tighter than I've any right to be held.

That embrace is yesterday and tomorrow and it's every today.

Memories like these visit in dreams that feel more like nightmares. We live our lives, but I go in shadows of longing, looming shade.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPgfyeQLzkk

Ami said forget september,

humid hills like sunken caves;

she said to unravel every pebble i threw

off the

cliff.

A thousand battles ago a child

stood at an event horizon,

cast a shadow to a foul, frigid

eternity.

Common pain like gunpowder

fading! odd days without mom; siblings

cascade off trembling iced capped

precipice.

She stares me down a crystal brown

bottle, fizzing foamy mnemonics:

stay here, don’t look back;

stay here…

Knots shocked by demented

symphonics, caustic rain burns

her prancing iris- expanding

evergreen.

To feel anything, anything at all

and cast it upon any universe

takes every liquor and brew

designed by

sickened creators.

Tap my expansive conscious,

learn of punches taken, lungs scarred,

eyes and cold days locked behind

rusting prison.

Loneliness and solitude drifting

eroding isles. I climb bladed cliffs,

fighting lowly spirits, meet my hefty

disguise.

Thunder tonight dame keep your

satin dry, gin patches your ill blush,

razor blades and bear mace for

wailing marauders.

She patted my back, said to

forget that spectral fear

hovering above my flailing

lines.

Afar in a distant hood in Houston,

Texas i was born to a rocky

marriage that left me on an edge for decades to come.

I wish to forget vibrant forests,

The living water that flowed through those woodland streams.

I wish to forget the early sunshine

That fades to tri-colored dusk as the day wanes.

And why do I wish to forget the good?

So I could refresh my memory, on the joy of,

Simply living unafraid.

there are raspberries growing under the living room window,

and a hamster buried in the garden,

and the third stair from the top used to have a stain that looked kind of like a dog,

before we replaced the carpet.

all this is to say,

this place is more mine than it will ever be yours,

and I still walk the rooms in my head before I fall asleep at night,

the scars on my body a road map to every sharp corner.

I wish I could forget the forgotten:

Those who died in righteous conflicts. Those who lived good lives, but for whom no one attended their funerals. Those who died alone, without all the ones who should have been there absent in the end. Those mothers who do and over-do for their children, from slicing off the crust of sandwich bread to working an extra job for their education. Those fathers who teach their sons about the sacredness of daughters and teach their daughters about equality. Those siblings who beat and tickle their brothers and sisters one moment but would die for them the next. Those children who persevere through abuse and immature parents. Those doctors and nurses and others who do little things that aren't their job to make sure those in their care benefit from the maximum. Those in the legal profession who champion the truth over their careers. Those politicians who put freedom over national interests and national interests over party interests. Those children who grow up to raise children right.

All the things we take for granted that are otherwise ignored, by-passed, and so very important, even if posterity doesn't think so.

There are times I wish I could forget what it felt like to be whole. To be pain-free, light, unburdened by disease, discomfort, and the prison of a failing body.

If I could forget, then maybe I could be content with the ruins of my temple now. Appreciate the mysteries that come with age and imperfection.

But I remember wind in my hair from running through woods and the sweet ache of biking too far, too long, clean sweat washed away in a cool shower.

Now, a walk around the block leaves me tired for a week. Standing through a shower is torture. My brain often feels like it must punch through fog, an exercise in futility.

I can't forget, so I'll forgive my body for not living up to its memory.

I'll find beauty in the moment, smiles and laughter all the more precious for being rare.

They say time heals all wounds. The great Chrono-Healer. How ironic, then, for my pain to be chronic.

I wish I could forget exposing myself to you

Lying to myself that this was real

Letting you seep into my blood

Letting you have control over me

Losing everything i was for you

Ostracizing myself from the world for you

Obsessing over you

Obeying your words as if they were law

Opening my heart to pain

Vulgar words that scar me

Vulnerable to what you command

Venom from your touch that burns me

Vicious lies you spread

Egotistical rants that surrounded me

Emotionally neglecting what i needed most

Envying the freedom that was taken from me

Ending up where I never wanted to be

I wish that I could forget the way it feels to be intoxicated.

We all have natural urges and desires, for food, fellowship, rest, sex, etc. Those drives are natural and a healthy person is capable of exercising control over them in order to be productive. The craving of drugs is not among these natural urges. They are synthetic additions to the landscape of motivating forces within us, and they all predicated on some manifestation of brokeness, pain, or selfishness within the circumstantial contexts of life. A desire to escape or enhance what life has to offer.

Knowing what it's like to be drunk and singing karaoke, or to be stoned at the movies sort of takes away a certain level of enjoyment out of life, knowing that it could be "better" with the addition of X substance. Of course it wouldn't be better, I've tried the "I don't value sobriety like other people do" thing, and it just isn't profitable. There is a reason that we do not naturally or regularly feel the way we when we are intoxicated, and that's because we're not supposed to feel those things.

Euphoria is a blessing, elation is a blessing, relaxation is a blessing, warmth and feelings of goodwill are blessings and it is a blessing these experiences are dependant on context. Going out of your way to manufacture long-lasting emotional states for the sake of the experience itself is futile and dangerous. Without the exclusive and limited nature of emotion, there wouldn't be a way to organize a hierarchy of importance in our lives. If everything was equally amazing all the time there'd be no difference between shit and shinola, as it were. But when you give yourself over to constant intoxication, everything feels exactly how you want it to feel as often as you take the drug. Then you start to recognize that it's the drug, not the life experiences, that you want. You start to attach yourself to those feelings and your identity enmeshes with the drug experience, and the very thought of never feeling that way again becomes terrifying. And just like that, the adventure is taken out of life and you're left calculating out your life moment to moment, basing your schedule around when a certain pill is gonna kick in, how much money you have for the bar, or planning entire days around 8-12 hour periods of time where you will be useless to anybody but the pizza delivery guy.

Despite all that, I know what it's like to feel and see things in ways that are literally impossible without ingesting different kinds of poison. And I often find myself missing it like you'd miss a dead relative. It's almost a constant a state of ingratitude, as if the beauty of life isn't good enough as it is. Like a rubber band that gets stretched beyond it's limit and never fully takes its original shape again.

Don't do drugs kids.

For as long as we live

I will not wish

upon myself

or anyone else

that premature

death, to forget....

exponentially

elders say

it's built in

as mechanism

for our survival

that we shall neglect

the pain of our labor...

of work or war or birth

focus instead on

the by product,

the aftermath,

of less is more

and remember

ever after

life would be unbearable no?

in great detail

it's best then

to let it go...

to die little by little

to the highest power

of the unknown.

11.14.2023

Something to Forget challenge @dctezcan

Dear genie, for the three wishes I shall make em count..

I wish to forget you, the person who left for a month and chose to come back when I was finally fine in life again, when I no longer felt the burning tears roll down my cheeks.

I wish to forget all the memories we made along the way, because you were wholeheartedly the first person I loved in the form of a first love again, which is rarely ever possible.

I wish to forget all the pain you caused me, all the sleepless nights full of worry, while you smoke and drank, all for you to think it would be ok to come in a destroy all the things built.