Remembrance

A coffee shop. A bed full of clothes, a cat beneath the sheets, the sheets that are not tucked in because I forgot to,

Because I didn’t want to, for fear that the cat would hate me.

All my life I’ve wanted to remember.

Remember the happiness I once had, what it feels like to be in love, and the pain that keeps reminding me that I will never find it.

Not here, not now, maybe not ever.

There’s a thought in my head, words on my fingertips, and a song in my throat.

I’m in a constant state of wanting to sing, but if I sing, everyone will stare at me with their eyes,

Their eyes that judge me and tell me to stop.

I’ve decided to join the choir next year. The director likes me, though he doesn’t know me, and maybe, just maybe, I can become a better singer.

I want to remember you. Remember you for who you are and not where you’ve been, for what you’ve become and not what you hated most, which was yourself when you looked in the mirror.

Exes can be friends too, remember?

Maybe not now, but one day.

I remember the way you held me and told me I was the best thing you had. I remember the very next day you told me with cold eyes and even colder shoulders that you never wanted to see me again.

I remember getting that text when I was at the club, I was already drunk, and I thought it was you while I was kissing another man, and how my heart sank when I remembered it was my driver who had the same name as you.

This poem isn’t about you.

It’s about me. Me and the memories I’ve made and all the times I cried because even tears can represent love, though it hurts me so.

One day I want to write the most beautiful poem anyone has ever seen, and I believe this is it.

To share it with the world, to know that one day I will die and these poems I share will be the only thing left to remember me by.

That at my funeral, they’ll lay out my poems like a blanket, and my friends and family will read them and see where life took me, and where the angels are taking me now.

And they’ll cry, not because I am gone, but because I am there with them, reading them too.

I will always remember you, though you don’t love me, and I know you never had.

You were just a paper man who wanted to shred what I write, but don’t you know these pages are made of white gold?

Did you not learn what you were told?

I am a fire that doesn’t burn out, a wave that crashes against the walls and the ocean that will never sink.

I am the kiss you feel in the wind, the breath you feel under your skin, the smile you feel on the edges of your lips.

I am the joy you will never feel but one day want to feel.

I am the page you could never burn.

You will remember me one day and regret how you tried to rip me apart.

Even as I write this, I wonder if you’re thinking of me.

I wonder if you even know who I am.

I don’t even know who I’m talking about.

It doesn’t matter. You could be anyone I loved, and I will still feel the same.

I’ll set your heart on fire, just like the way I did with this man I’m talking to.

Someone who wants to know me and not my body.

That seems like a reoccurring theme, doesn’t it?

I’ll always be that fire.

Whether you can handle it or not.

Remember me,

I am not gone,

I am still here, flickering back.