A memory.

One amidst billions and trillions

Connected and intertwined

And separate from the rest.

It could be

Vivid

Colorful

Cheerful.

Something to hold on to;

Something not to lose.

A treasured possession,

Recalled lightly with a smile.

Or, it could be

Blurred

Muddied

Emotionally packed.

Something banished to the back corner;

Something held at bay.

Yet, it lurks at the edge of nightmares

Unwanted, but doesn't listen to what you say.

It could be neutral.

A coffee cup.

A painting on the wall.

A bird chirping on a rainy day.

A memory made

Is a memory saved.

Forgetting is not a good thing to do;

Your memories equal you.

a memory lost

within the swirls of time

a truth was carved

within a lie

and when we're all shaken

to our cores

we'll still get up and give

a final encore

so the lost libretto deeply sounds

a faded memory in a ghost town

the clouds are fading from the sky

will anyone mourn for me when i die?

a memory lost

within a lie

happy smiles

covered with sad cries

the world is spinning round

what i wish i could say

i'm lost in this world

till the break of day

won't anyone save me

from this fate

i'm trapped in here

day after day

--

Years after I'm again lost in the world

On and on into the darkness I will twirl

A secret kept from this world of mine

That my whole life was a lie!

Only the ones that have experienced the most pain will have a memory, a memory filled with hate and grief and longing for the ones they left behind and what they could've had.

Only the ones that have experienced the most happiness will have a memory, a vision of sunshine and rain and fullness beyond what they thought they could ever experience.

Only the ones who have experienced the most peace will have a memory, a memory filled with white and pastels and wishes for a more eventful life that can yield them more fruit for their work.

Only the people who have lived will have a memory, a memory of white and grey and black and blue and red and green and rainbows, a hurricane of thoughts and fury spinning through a clear blue sky.

My heart pounded as I hoisted the heavy bags into the car. I took one last look at the white, paneled walls of the old house with its blue shutters and cluttered drive. Edith, my tiny cat and best friend, skittered past in an upstairs window, and a sudden lurch rose in my stomach. It would only be a month until I saw her again but still it hurt.

As we backed slowly up the drive, and Edith disappeared behind a pale, silken curtain, the excitement took over once again. This was my great adventure, my final destiny commencing. Ever since I had been little, I had dreamed of this moment - it was finally here.

The interstates and two-laned back roads were choked with traffic. Thick, stinking clouds of exhausted gathered behind the large commercial semi-trucks and broken down old junkers of backwoods Alabama. The stinking air filled the car, snaking its long pungent tendrils through the half-cracked windows of the small Chevy Malibu. You would do anything for respite in that thick, moist Alabama summer heat, even in breath in the noxious fumes of interstate pollution.

A long line of cars filled the drop lane at the airport. The excitement was at an all-time high, filling my chest and my stomach. I was equal parts excited and nervous. Everything was about to change for me, the world as I knew it was at an end.

At the last moment, my father pulled the car slowly into the cool shade of a short-term parking area.

“The least I could do is see my daughter off as she leaves America.”

I smiled thinly at him, afraid my bile would betray the nerves that now wracked me. Slowly, we excited the car, and hoisted the heavy bags back into the world, dragging them heavily behind us as we approached the glistening glass windows of the Birmingham Airport.

The line to the luggage desk twisted and wrapped upon itself, layer after layer. The girl at the desk smiled when she finally read my destination. Scotland was a magical place, she’d heard, one where knights and castles existed in more than the mind of little girls. She took my card, and checked my details, wishing me luck. The excitement was back. My heart was racing. This was my destiny.

Free of the heavy and cumbersome bags that now held my entire existence, we made our way slowly to the final security line. It was the moment when things got real. My father hugged me, and wished me luck.

“This is it. You’re gonna be great. You’ve been waiting for this forever. Enjoy it.”

“I can’t believe it. I can’t believe I’m finally going back.”

“Enjoy it while you can. It’s going to be so much fun.”

“I don’t know if I can do this.” Tears filled my eyes, and my stomach heaved.

My father laughed.

“You can do anything. That’s the great thing about you, you can do anything you want and more! Call me when you get there, and be safe!”

With a final hug, and tears in my eyes, I made my way through the security line, passport and tickets in hand. This was it.

I went through the motions, numb and unbelieving. In two hours, I would be soaring above the United States, then above the Atlantic Ocean. In a few more hours, I would be touching down into the cool, damp air of Scotland, my feet back on that ground that made everything make sense.

I sat in the terminal, my stomach and my mind rolling. I watched as the people passed to and fro. Each one had their partner, their companion. Some held hands, some walked with their arms intertwined. Some pushed their partners along in strollers, carriers and wheelchairs, others walked distantly and blankly side by side. I was alone. There was no partner here to keep me company, no friend, no lover, no pet. This was my big adventure, and mine alone. This was a leap that could not be made in pairs.

A voice finally came over the intercom. It was time to board my flight for Edinburgh.

I walked along the cool, grey and white hallway that led into the shaded and stiff interior of the hulking white plane. The great adventure had reached its final launching stage.

This time tomorrow, I would wake in the arms of a new city in a new country. This time tomorrow, I would be in a world equal parts foreign and familiar. This time tomorrow I would be cradled in the arms of history and culture, past and present.

This time tomorrow, I would be hand in hand with the lover that I missed.

This was an adventure I was sure to never forget.

I see faded books and yellow pages.

Dust covered nooks and wide cracks

Where planks meet.

Two wooden shelves

Serve as cupboards

As well as for roach defecation

Sprinklings of tiny specks

Mating grounds.

And metal drums four

For dining table, rough planks suspended

Some criss crossing

Broken chairs

Four mismatched

One downturned,

A Tin drum.

A spider here and webs long abandoned there

I smell ointment and see a bottle filled with brown herb

Rue, pungent herb, submerged in a amber liquid

Nothing else enters my young mind here,

Just quiet,

The smell of dust, desiccated wood planks for floorboards

Felled a hundred years ago to make a shack.

The creak of my mother walking across this floor

She glues spanish pages from a Mexican tabloid

Back to black white stove, enamel chipped

For pot of hot water flour mix, homemade glue

Brown knots and companion holes

Cover planks gaps between to eavesdrop

In room across

Containing metal drums too

Wood planks too criss cross

For springs to bed

Dingy grey white ancient old

Yellow stained

Ancient urine dried

Pungent smells mixed with ointments

This remote shack in San Joaquin valley

Was mine a rough 59 earth cycles ago

I remember, almost forget

Parts of where I came from

My memory was young then

Almost forget, but still remember vivid

Much of our existence involves simple states of mind

Interdimensional realities

I ponder these things

In a different dimension again,

Sitting in a Fresno parking lot

Waiting at the threshold

Of another memory

The shack is gone

Rough 45 miles west off Nees

Torn down

But its mother shack

Still stands

If shacks could talk

I would go back

And walk about

Listen for its voice

And of its offspring

Other shacks besides our own

Ghosts, voices

Sounding through the leaves of dusk covered tamarisk trees

In that Mexican labor camp

Brought back by the ethereal magic

Called imagination.

Memory and it’s making

Without video tape or Kodak celluloid technology

Memory residing in a thing called brain

Or spirit

Memory - my life,

All contained, replayed at the touch

Of time

To sit and reflect and ponder

Dimensions lived and yet to live

Unpredictable

Integrated with yours

Who kindly challenged me to

Remember

Thank you for asking Prose Poster,

Otherwise this Moment

Would have passed unrecorded.

My memories with

You are a vivid neon-

Never forgotten.

But when you left me,

All alone, drowning in tears,

They began to fade.

Vibrants bled into

Watercolors and pastels.

Dull, yet remembered.

Canvases tore in

My natural disasters-

Known as emotions.

Storms raged inside while

My body struggled to stay

Intact. It did so.

The repairs began.

And thus, years of hard work and

Pained torture ensued.

Structures were built- ties

Were cut. Production never

ceased. It got better.

New love came along.

Returning my colors to

Me- Not like before.

They weren't neons

Of youth and innocence. They

Were the colors of

Experience. I

Was a juxtaposition

At its finest. But

Now I am all things

Similes and metaphors.

Beauty through and through.

I was indecent in the beginning. I supported myself and did my best at seven years old with an uncaring mother.

Then she brought him home.

I was told that mommy was having another baby. I thought I would feel sorry for the kid at most; it was going to be in the same position as me.

Then my mother walked through the door, a little boy in the basket dangling off her arm. She set it down and picked the boy up. Smiling at me, she let me hold him.

The moment he settled in my arms, I knew there was nothing left for it. I couldn't feel pity, because I would make sure that he never lived the same. He would be loved, he would eat, he would do better than me.

As I promised myself this, he blinked open his eyes, like a cute kitten. He was nameless as of then. As I held him, I whispered, "Keeghan," so that's what's on the certificate of birth now.

My mother couldn't be bothered to name him. Just as she couldn't be bothered to notice her daughter raised her son.

I might be a bit full of pride, but I raised him better than she ever raised me.

"Do you love me?" I screamed with tears streaming down my face.

"Fuck you, bitch!" Was his reply.

Still begging and pleading I ask him, "just tell me you love me"...holding a bottle of pills.

With fire and anger in his eyes he glares at me.

I began swallowing one at time. "Please!!! Don't you love me? Do you care?" 3 more pills down.

"Ok. I guess you could careless if I live or die, I'll just finish this bottle."

"Go ahead" he says emotionless.

Pill after pill I swallowed each and everyone as he sat and watched.

He gets up and goes to our oldest child. "Your Mom just took and entire bottle of muscle relaxers, do what you want, I need to go to work." The door slams behind him.

"Mom!!!! Mom!!!! What did you take???"

I handed him the empty bottle. My body is comfortably numb.

"Mom! Look at me! Get in the car!" "Oh my God, mom! Why??"

"I just wanted him to tell me he loved me".

Some memories sear on your mind like a brand from a hot iron. In the summer of 2010, while the mother of my three children was homeschooling our kids, a suspicion or prejudice set her ablaze. While my oldest daughter was setting at her desk doing her work downstairs, her Mom engulfs her space yelling” faggot, faggot, faggot…!” The incessant screaming does not end it is only one word repeated over and over a whole minute goes by. I attempt to ease my wife off of our daughter to quelch her wrath. My daughter in dangerous brokenness and overdosed by her Mom’s words, runs upstairs with tears streaming from her eyes, each tear losing a little of herself! I find a brief solace of peace in the air without the anger spilling over on my daughter. I go upstairs to hold my daughter and ease her brokenness. She is nowhere to be found, and neither is her prescription meds dosed for whatever were her symptoms. We now together, my wife and I, comb the house, looking for just a hint of my broken China doll. With not a piece to be found, we brush onto the yard and into the woods. Now in disbelief, my wife calls friends, and neighbors with screams of help! I call the police in desperation. With lots of land and a river down below our hill, My friend and I ran the river bank . Both of us already trained for a marathon, found ourselves breathless. The minutes became hours. Now I only felt for the worse despite my numbness. As we stood outside with the police anxious to go their families, I leaned to my wife and uttered in with complete peace “this is your fault.” These words may have hurt or even cracked her hardened porcelain a little that day, but I was not angry only truthful. Later, miles away an overworked police officer picks my daughter up on the road, scars up and down her legs from overgrown thorns with blood glistening the evening shadows, and there were other scars that no daylight would ever see. Years later my married daughter still seeks happiness from her brokenness. I think a piece of my china doll was lost in the woods on that wreckless day.