Rest in Me
This poem still makes me feel heavy in the chest and twists my mind. The question I had in front of me, as I was penning down ideas, is ‘why are memories important?’ Seriously, I would still like to know. Why do you think we have memories? Are they important to you? To me, they are even if I wish that some of them would be gone. They rest in us forever.
Be like water.
Written in London, UK 2023
Some contemplations made next to
A mug of warmth
Every little bead followed by another one
All of you made an impact.
Some dug holes and others scratched
Nevertheless you stayed in one’s head
Locked inside a tiny endless universe
Under an umbrella we call memory
Why are these good for anyone?
Are these really necessary as they only
Give us awareness of our continued
Existence?
Sparks that turned to lifeless ash
But we still blow big breaths holding
Our attention to see re-ignition
Formidable actions layered like pancakes
Drizzled with tears and hope
You can let them go.
Yet, no pick up truck is showing up
A man and a van cannot be rented to
Place them in a storage box
If it was expulsion, intensity attached
If it was a voluntary leaving,
Sometimes you still end up yearning
I tried making different concoctions
Used destruction as a new foundation
I even read about this thing called transmutation
Opus magnum, apparently the greatest
Work an artist can build in the unknown
Hours of in between spaces
Since you all rest in me as active fragments,
did you help at all to create
All the stained texts
Or is the idea of hardships being formed
Into golden rays of light too tattered
To entertain forever?
This is not tied to language but tied to our world.
Attached sometimes as an
anchor but then it also a curse.
What makes memories so important?
I ask it very straightforwardly.
What was the reason we met if it lead to nothing?
If I shatter my beads and throw them away,
I’ll end up locked in solitary.
If I hold on to them the past takes over present.
And the present always stays empty
anyways, so there wouldn’t be
need for this to be written
Nothing should’ve been recorded.
History and all of my contemporaries
made useless magic with their pens
I am not me and you are not you
and what happened never even existed
outside of that point so why does it stay?
Because it did. It is resting inside of me.
Where is that inside? It’s sure not in my stomach,
that only holds acid.
It is, and it was real after all so that must be enough
Unless one day you show up and
Say it was all a bluff.
- A