Fading

Months ago, when I heard sonorous voices explain how when we remember, we actually chemically reconstruct the moment in our brain, that we are there experiencing the instant we first slotted away sounds and images and emotions, I was amused. 

How poetically perfect. 

When I close my eyes and think about our fist kiss, I’m there, reliving it, my arm around you as you turn to look at me, close your eyes, purse your lips.

Weeks ago, it seemed like a curious fact that as we reconstruct our memories, they become vulnerable.  We are not the architects of the ages; when we pick up a memory, we can never put it back with perfect accuracy.  Askew, it will always and forever be colored by context of our remembering.

At dawn, drawn up next to you, moments before I leave, I kiss you where I kissed you the night before, and the memory is bathed in love and early morning light.

Now, with you gone, I’m petrified to recall your face. 

I don’t want to smudge the lines of perfection; I can’t lose your eyes the moments before you wrap your hand around my neck to pull me closer.  I’ve already forgotten the line of your hip that I used to trace with my finger just after making love because I can’t stop thinking that I’ll never hold you again.

The more I remember, the farther you get, the dimmer you become, and I know why. 

How poetically perfect.

Brokenness

When I was eight I fell out of a tree.
I had climbed over knuckles,
through joints and straddling crotches and
made my way to where, from the ground, I was a ghost,
a rustle of leaves that emanated from no figure or form.
Up in the branches,
I was king and queen and jester
ruling over a royal court
that swayed and creaked and bowed at my will.

Early the next morning I summoned the sun,
and it heeded.
Then I beckoned the wind,
and it blew.
I called for a dance
and the birds swooned and swirled circles.
Then I bowed to the branches,
and they bowed lower.
I lowered my head and the tree
swung its arms down and away in a grand gesture.
I bowed as low as I could, in happy deference to my loyal subject,
and I fell.

When I was eight I fell out of a tree.
I broke my arm, broke it good.
It's healed now.
I've seen the X-rays and Doctor Hilden says
that my arm will never break in the same place again,
that I'm even stronger than I was before. I don't believe him.
I won't go back up that tree;
I won't risk it even for kingship
because I'm pretty sure if I fall, that I'll break, again,
in just the same place,
and that I'll never be stronger than I was before the fall.