5 Seconds

I once heard that goldfish only retain memories for five seconds.

I once heard that goldfish only retain memories for five seconds.

That means each time your heart beats it ticks away
one more memory from some
fish,
swimming in a tank.

I think sometimes that we feel the way goldfish remember.

I think we let our emotions come and go,
quick like a memory that
we will
never have again.

Imagine, swirling around and around, seeing the same two other fish.

You'd never know which one you could trust, but,
they would never know when they could trust you.
A scary thought,
and
yet

I watch these fish swim inside a restaurant
and wonder
if they live in constant fear,
fear that these things that tower over them will one day scoop them up.

Some say they're domesticated, and
I wonder: How do you domesticate a fish
if it can't remember
that it's domesticated.

Because, if there is a way to remember
in the middle of oblivion
I want to learn the trick.

I want to see your face
floating
beside mine,
a reminder that something lasts beyond the next fin splash.

Five seconds, long enough for you to blink
your eyelashes and whisper my name.
Long enough for me to slip a finger between
buttons and across
your skin.

Enough for my breathing
to change and the memory
to come back
from where it was hidden,

For the memory to go back
where it came from and to make us anew.
Memory.

It's ticking, ticking, faster every second;
I heard once that it's how we perceive time.
Time is a thought and
I
haven't been thinking about it.

Time is an angry lover and the more you ignore it, the angrier it is.

"But I didn't know, I didn't think," a thousand
and one blank excuses,
hollow dodges as you try to explain.

It doesn't matter because
Time will grab at you
from someplace secret and
Time will know the answer,
before you do.

Time will make it clear that no matter what, It's there.

And I think about how five seconds is long enough
for me to recognize a stranger, from five years ago,
from another life, because surely all my cells have changed and disappeared.

I know it's two years too soon,
but I need to be someone different,
I need to be someone new for these people.

I need my cells to be entirely different,
a brand new me,
indistinguishable
from me.

1 second: She is promising the Future,
Time is.
She is promising another shot, another me
if I can just hold on and think about her always.

But I don't think I can hold her that close,
I think I'd rather have her be a surprise
visitor
and there, we've made eye contact
and Time is
laughing in my ear.

"What're you?
A lawyer,
great,
me?
I work at Arby's"

And I feel Time burn me,
I've not used her
the way she wants.

2 seconds: Yes,
she is angry, but underneath I can't
help that she's afraid
'cause she knows that one day she,
too,
will be gone.

She whispers low and hungry,
a permanent distraction,
"Use me, I'm here for you!"
And
I can't think,

but it's a curse, this word,
Use.
I can't use her.

3 seconds: There are weeks
and months and years between us
and I've let Time get under my skin.
But I try

to think of something
else, someone else
whose fingers are not
so rough.

4 seconds: They say
time is like a river,
and you can't
change the flow.

Watching a goldfish in
its tank makes me think:
it doesn't matter,

if you can't remember
which way you're going.
Does the fish ever think
about going back?

5 seconds: I have never seen
a goldfish go back
on itself, turning
to face the stream

pushing it further and further
away from home.
Five seconds is all it takes
for a goldfish to forget

home is still there,
but you can't ever go back.

Would it be so horrible,
to swim forever forward,
never sure where
you're going,
never knowing from
where you came?