Something I wrote a while back, thought I’d post it.
The Fear of Forgetting
There is nothing, nothing but a deep, heavy silence left, sinking to the very bottom of the bones; lead weight in the marrow – no birdsong, no rustling of the wind and the leaves, no laughter, no buzzing of the insects, not a single sound. It is a stunningly lucid day, clearer than anything in the past, and anything that will ever be again. A bright expanse of pale blue, a simplicity and stillness so profound that it seeps under skin, holding me unmoving, quiet to the spot. There is nothing, nothing but this left.
My heart sinks and although I cannot hear a thing, not even the soft certainty of life’s slow inhale and exhale, I know my breath catches here in this moment. There are no tears, tears will not come, there is no anger, the energy will never again be born in the chest and stomach.
All that is left is the past, every moment that has led to this moment, this moment frozen in time for all of eternity. The past, the past – it is in the profound nothingness that the fear grows and grows, until it freezes my blood cold on the spot. Time wears the memories thin, sandpaper to skin, water trickling inevitably through cracks to God knows where. To somewhere it is lost forever.
God, please don’t let it be gone.
I try and hold on, a white knuckle grip to fading mist in dawn, I try and hold on to the colour of the sunrise on that first day of college, I try and hold on to the slow rumble of the air conditioning that once lulled me to sleep every night, I try and hold on to the sound of her laugh, his voice, the way my mother rolled her eyes at a forgotten joke at the dinner table, I try to hold on to the smell of burning toast in the kitchen and the sound of slippers pitter-pattering across tiled floor, the bus engines outside the window late at night, I try and try and try. That one joke a morning an eternity gone that had me laughing non stop for a half hour, the tune of a song once playing on repeat in my mind which has now faded to a distant note that is growing softer by the second, the colour of her eyes and the way they lit up that evening, the warmth of an embrace that has long gone.
Now there is nothing but the past.
Now there is only a frozen present that will no longer produce new emotions to forget the old, no longer birth new presents that will transform into old pasts, no longer create new moments to fill the spaces left by old moments constantly dying, to be forever forgotten without our notice.
And time, as it is, crawls inevitably on. With every second, corroding at what you have, washing smooth the sand on the shore.
God, now I don’t even remember the taste of honey on tongue, the smell of fresh autumn air, the sound of soft piano music downstairs, now I don’t even remember her voice or the way her laugh sounded in the bright air of dawn, now I don’t even remember a single moment of any little thing – God help me, because I cannot hold onto a single thing.
What do we have left now?
