I Don't Remember

I don’t remember you. I mean, not really. I don’t remember the way your hair smells or the way your eyes sparkle when you’re feeling mischievous. I imagine there is a pane of dirty glass between me and the memories of you and that is what is preventing me from remembering you. That is what I imagine. Because I don’t remember the way your voice would send chills through me when you would whisper close to my ear at the annoying dinner parties we were forced to attend. I don’t remember the way you took my hand and the world faded to nothing until it was only you and I. I don’t remember how the noise of the world would drop to a pointless buzz when I heard your laugh. Try as I might, I just can’t recall anything about you.

It wasn’t the first time that your kiss had sent me spiraling into desire, but I don’t remember the first kiss. I don’t remember the rain, and the fact that people stared at us as if we were completely mad, and how it seemed that the time passed so slowly from when I realized what was about to happen until the moment your lips met mine. I don’t remember how you told me that I tasted like sweet honey and how I laughed and told you that you tasted delicious to me as well. It has all fallen away in my mind, slipped through the cracks, as it were, and I honestly don’t remember, no matter how hard I try.

My friends don’t believe me when I tell them that I don’t remember much about you. I don’t remember how you would talk to me softly when I couldn’t sleep and how your voice would lull me into blissful unconsciousness. I don’t remember how it felt to be with you in the movie theater, in the park, in the restaurant, in the grocery store. I just can’t conjure up anything about you that would make me miss you.

I heard today that you were coming home at last. New York didn’t quite work out for you. I told them that I wouldn’t even recognize you, that it had been so long and I had moved so far past you that I wouldn’t recognize you. They told me they didn’t believe me. I said that I don’t even remember your name.

And yet, here we sit having coffee and I’m having the hardest time remembering to not remember how wonderful it was to be loved by you, how exciting it was to love you in return, and how delightful it was to sit with you and watch you. I don’t remember what you just said to me. I would rather not remember a great deal of things. I guess my memory is a little bit off.

I apparently have been forgetting a lot of things lately. I’m so sorry but I can’t seem to remember your new wife’s name…












May 4, 2009 I Don’t Remember exercise page 3