Sunday, January 7, 2018

The Memory of Moments

You’ve been thinking of memories
Of a place that you’ve been –
A place that, unfortunately,
You’ll likely never get to again.

Little flashbacks, you’re having,
Of inconsequential things.
Walking out of a grocery store off main,
Down the road from construction, and doors.

It’s dancing in a living room one night
On a faded brown carpet
With a large singed portion
Which the Elders burned before your time.

It’s mounting a snow heap,
Feeling victorious in heavy snow boots,
Laughing through wind blowing sideways
Just before a dinner appointment.

It’s feeling your fleece lined leggings
Underneath your skirt,
Remembering the feeling of heavy socks
Worn over top, and up the calf.

It’s a cathedral on a hill,
Dinner in an Indian restaurant,
Waiting in line at a Subway,
Discovering Bulk Barn for that first time.

Buying stamps and looking at cards
Down the road from the poutine joint.
Seeing the weather broadcasted in Celsius
To the apartment lobby in the morning.

It’s eating lunch under that tree.
It must have been a Saturday,
Because there were no kids at the school.
We took our shoes off. I wanted to cry.

It’s that centipede we found in our apartment.
That frog I caught in my scripture case.
Our umbrella flipping upside down in the rain,
And our running back for home and the car, laughing.

It’s that conversation with that bus driver.
It’s that first day emailing home in the library.
It was discovering a new city,
And pushing cars out of snowbanks.

It’s that vague recollection of ringing a buzzer
To see if someone was home.
They weren’t. We left.
But I remember ringing that buzzer.

These are memories that I cannot share.
No one will know
The places that I have been.
The feelings that I have had.

I long to visit the places of the past,
Though I fear that this longing
Will never be satiated,
As I will never be right there again.

It will never be quite the same.

I realized this in the middle of the night.
A crying baby needed me.
A bottle was given.
A diaper needed changing.

I placed him on a changing table
And stretched, my hands to the ceiling.
He stretched too,
An exact mirror image of me.

I will never be here again.
These moments no camera will record.
The moments that open your eyes,
When you experience things deeply.

My past is just that. My own.
It will never be known.
I can show you the streets, but to you,
They will only be fresh, new things.

I can’t show you my heart.
I can’t show you the fog that rolled in.
How surreal it was when I wrote it
In a dark room, under its immaterial glow.

They are memories of moments.
They are unknowable, but to me.
The longing ache I feel for that past
Can never be fully redeemed. 




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