We sewed name tags in all my dad’s clothes. But eventually he forgot who he was.
memory
Sonday
Monday, Tuesday, Winsday, Thrusday.
Freeday.
Sitterday.
Sonday. The day when he finally visits. When he – who is he? Where has he gone?
Let us walk through the old city alleys
Let us walk through the old city alleys and tell each other stories of how our lives have been, stories of the heart and head, of what was and what might never have been.
And no regrets, no, no regrets. It wasn’t and it wasn’t and that is how it was. No regrets, no tears, red sunsets beautiful as the rising sun, the summer noon has been and gone and now you hold my hand.
White wall old city alleys, we stop and look up and smell the dust and smile at the swallows in the line of blue. Hands softly tighten, fingers lock gentle.
And the stories we are telling we shall tell forever.
If I lie back on the hot sand and
If I lie back on the hot sand and look at the blank blue sky, there is too much behind the blueness, behind my eyes, for me to make sense of or to write.
I need to walk back across the sand to the shade of the pine trees and pick up a needle or a cone to look at and understand. And then the pattern comes.
I am my past. And an infinity of futures branching away into the possible. My past brought me here, to this shining silver point on which I balance, from which I will stumble on through one, through many, perhaps through all of my futures.
But perhaps I’ll stay lying on the hot sand, under the hot sun, my eyes closed, unable to understand. Perhaps.
I miss you more than words
I miss you more than words, more than music, more than singing.
I miss you more than breathing, more than blood, more than being.
I miss you more than you will ever know, ever dream or ever care.
I miss you now and now forever. I miss you now.
Now in memory only red flowers grow
We walked slowly round the ruins of the old town, destroyed years before by the victors of that time. Now in memory only red flowers grow.
The day the stories were forgotten
The day the stories were forgotten dawned brightly. The wind blew cold from the west and the sun sank again, back to the east from a hands breadth above the horizon. Night came again and stayed for an hour. When the sun rose again, cold and bright again, all the stories had been forgotten.
Remembering
A firework arcs across the night sky of your past, arching, falling, then dampened beneath the sand of your years of life, of experience. And then, then, it sparks into life again, and you are shaking, dazzled, your heart a hammer.
simonsalento 