The Things I’ve Forgotten

By Mike Tensmeyer, OMSIV 

I picture a planet,

filled with all the things

that I’ve forgotten.

If I stare at it long enough,

sometimes things appear,

like looking at a dark piece of night sky.

 

When do you enter that planet?

Will you find enough there

to keep you occupied

until I can join you?

 

Everything good in my mind

is tethered into a shrinking orbit.

I am running my fingers around

a frayed hole in the cloth,

a rolling coin,

a thought spinning too quickly to catch.

One word now,

to remember your entire voice.

 

My heart lurches

over the edge

if the thought of you comes back too quickly.

If there’s too much definition.

If I feel exactly

like you are here again.

I choke on it,

I could die from it -

 

there was a moment,

we were sat down

in grass,

electricity in our movements,

full and brimming,

the way that a moment can be

only when you know it will end.

 

I still have the vision of it.

Even some of the sounds.

With my eyes closed

and sunlight on my nose

I can smell it -

but the newness of it,

the piece of it that felt not over,

lives on a planet,

with you.

 

So I’ll forget you,

most of you:

I’ll let you have the furniture,

and I’ll let you have

the red-striped washcloth,

and then I’ll give to you

moments, one at a time,

then I’ll give you the house.

You can have our dog,

and then, after so much,

and maybe in a flash,

you can have me.

 

I miss you,

miss you right into the photo and out the back of it,

miss you into foreign spaces,

miss you until we find something new, together,

some night,

frogs croaking,

soft darkness,

new,

again.