once, yesterday, a year ago, i don’t know 

when, my sister laughed in disbelief saying 

i must just remember everything, but i don’t 

only the specifics the soaring the sorrows 

only the smallest of moments & the worst of days things happen so they can be thought late at night & never let go worthy of reconsideration & reconciliation & that time i might have been dreaming or lying, but no doubt lying on the empty, life-drinking, miserably frigid floor ready to give it all, everything to one person 

alone but i was the one person alone 

& i forgot how to gift myself anything. 

forgot where i fall on the list of so many 

for whom i love & loathe & yearn & rip myself apart // 

for whom i love, loathe, yearn, rip apart, 

their sunlit-window-pane-eyes & window hearts 

airlift me from universes i create & fuel & fester in in which they despise me or worse forget me, which is worse? & the problem, so many problems in pockets, corners, fingernails, eyelids is not that i receive nothing it is that i know you more than i know myself, that the 

one thing i forgot to consider was that which 

now it’s too late to remember to remember; 

i think i was playing hide-&-go-seek 

last time i checked, funny how i found everyone 

else but they didn’t tell me the rules & i ran away

everyone else was me but they still couldn’t stop me everyone is lost these days but that didn’t stop me 

// 

these days everyone is lost but that won’t stop me from losing my own me, looking, failing, wishing i could wake up dead & grinning in relief when i don’t that pain will never be unique & that is why it is so mine, so ok, so much power, radiant flood of golden perfect light burning, bursting when i let myself be like everyone else like humans that is, just here to feel, is that why we’re here? do we hate each other because we need something anything to strike the match against? 

do we say those things & since it’s too late for regret we turn into them instead? i like to think about people like that, ask what nobody has not known. 

which question has everybody asked? & then again it can’t be shameful to breathe & forget the big & far beyond 

// 

everything big, far, beyond, beneath the surface void-mountain-horizon: i breathe it out, i like the little things more & i listen to what i like, just listen to the beautiful rain & the not-quite delicate but invaluable ingestible laughs of each individual family member. hear it & tell me all the love in the world isn’t resting, resonating in the wooden grooves of our dining room table. a splendid reminder; some other moment i am back there with no where to go, no air to breathe no space to grow, & does that rueful pendulum of emotion betray & sway so often for others too? i laugh at the polarization of my thoughts, & i cry & it is so ironic because look at that,

exuberance is back again tomorrow. smiles birthed by tears. i think i said something i mentioned earlier; all i can do is repeat 

// 

i mentioned it earlier, what i do is re-mention, i circle 

i become the buzzard around my most comforting existential crises customized timidness, irrational reluctance, strange-as-ever everlasting do-it-yourself philosophical enlightenment 

every night this week. but i am just fine rolling over 

those ruts of those habits & safe in this 

very own sentience of mine. i gave everything only to realize i did it all wrong, but could i really wish to do-over something like that? peace, transcendence, forgiveness long 

over-due. i still spend some of the night reckoning but the rest dreaming. my place of dreams, every place i have ever been, even better once they have already been. my memory 

must be paradise, what with the time i withstand withering over it. a whole life, withering, lamenting, living, dying, feeling, forgiving 

// 

lamenting & feeling & living & dying & searching & forgiving i will give it all to you, in an instant, any day, 

of course, again, today, tomorrow, always, this afternoon? but no, not for an eternity. today is my turn & i will smile at every kid on the street, ever-entranced by mouldable minds 

all ounces of me wishing to trade but 

i do think the world is just as vast now just as open 

mouthed malleable minded & the goal is just the same, i can do it all. i will taste each sun-colored strawberry. 

walk alone when it’s purple twilight & breezy & i have nowhere to be & everything to come home to. i will be who i have been forever & not ever understood how,

if i linger helpless hopeless again & undoubtedly i will 

i’ll return with hope because at last i am me & i always end it with hope // 

i, me, every one who has-been-is-will-be me, ends with hope 

we cannot hate what we were made with, we cannot 

do it. a once-in-a-while sprinkle falls for the purpose of putting words to hard things, a hurricane comes & i put my cheek to the hardest of floors, & i get back up & i get back up & i get back up with wind at my face or my back, i feel it every which way anyway. i think it is a blessing to hurt from something someone once did one time a long time ago 

something there are four or five ways to remember many 

somethings i might never forget but there is still that instant between waking & consciousness where they leave me in peace. the alternative, inescapable. i know too how to steer clear because i have good luck & also because over here is all the wonder, closely carefully condensed, every moment memory stacked up five feet & ten inches high & all of it imperfect but oh, oh its heart is so warm. feel it, a floating flowering flourishing fleeting furnace.