Thursday

THIS IS WHY I WRITE said the Gods, unaware that his/her/its memories were missing: and so we write; we wish we wrote, wish we took pens with us to bed, covered our blankets in paper, filled our pillows with ink and rearranged our dreams in terms of consonants and syllables and meter. We miss ourselves in memories of ourselves; we ache for what we have not yet known, could not have yet known, but still yet know: words remember; language remembers. Everything that we remember and all that we cannot remember is all a memory of the same silence, the same nothingness, a chain of memories that is tethered to us and dangles from nothing. And so we write. THIS IS WHY I WRITE. And the Gods begat a Son, and a Daughter, and another, and another. The words are already remembered; nothing is ever truly formed or created or learned, only recalled. Memory preexists. And so we wish we wrote, wish we could write, knowing full well that nothing is ever truly written. I/we acknowledge the silence as much as the silence is personified and takes on my/our shape. We are all silence. THIS IS WHY I WRITE. Because the Gods, posing in Charlie Chaplain still-frames, are not the photographers. This is why I write. We are all memories of motion, of noise. We are the memories of each other. I/we remember in silence until all that is left is the silence, the holes and torn edges between what our bodies remember and our minds remember and our hearts remember. Our hearts collectively stutter, then still as breath is measured, accounted for, counted on to convey messages between us and from us. This is why I write.


Funeral

 She wore a red dress to your funeral,

standing straight and straight-faced
alongside of your black clad family.

She didn't seem to notice the sharp stares,
or feel the stinging sneers,
and when the Priest glared at her she glared back.

It seemed a long time that we all stood there,
sneaking glimpses of red,
stunned into silence by such bold grieving.

Finally it was over and she left,
weaving through the tombstones,
spilling blood among the polished marble.