“Proust had a bad memory,

                         the only kind worth having

Beckett argues: there’s no remembrance

                         and so no revelation,”

–Denise Levertov

 

 

Like stray cats cautiously

patrolling the periphery,

memory haunts the present.

Even small transgressions

resonate into horror,

for there is no possibility

to repress, a form

of forgetting

inherent with silence,

abused children,

and broken lovers.

The details blur and slip

from one to another,

unfolding their lines randomly

within a new context,

until you realize

what it is

you have done,

and that it cannot

be undone.

 

(June 5, 2018)