“when i desire you, a part of me is gone” -Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet
sure, but what happens when a body melts into you, and you try to find traces of yourself with your palms wrapped around their eyes?
what are you looking for in each body? if every touch is a memory, then memory is a tricky thing. because lovers leave, and they leave by in your body a mess of seasons. your body is essentially an archival journey of touch and smells.
your body is an art in the making, only the sculptors change.
all my lovers have said my palms perfectly fit into theirs. lovers leave and my palms smell of so much more than what i have known.
i find them in the smell of soaps. they rest as a drop of fleeting cologne on my wrists. sometimes in the corner of my eye as a streak of kohl.
kohl melts, as i wash away a memory of you.
how have i smelt, i wonder.
and i try to remember what exactly i remember, when i say i remember something.
and i write only when i am in love.
when i am not, i try to remember what i meant when i used the word “love.” strange word, this love is. every time you try to make sense of what it really is, you lose yourself in the politics of language.
or yourself in the person. and sometimes, the person.
they say people are only emotions.
i wonder if memory and emotion are the same. we remember, what we want to, how we want to. and in all that remembering, we see ourselves sometimes through their eyes and when we try to see ourselves through our own eyes, we remember us only in the sound of our names in their tongue.
in my remembrance, you could be an August cloud or a shoe that i don’t wear anymore, nor get rid of. i don’t know, my memory is homesick.
i don’t want to talk about you.
in my memory, you are a song. songs that i listen to only when i have to cry you out.
no, don’t be validated, if you are reading this. i always flush the tissue i use, to blow my nose into. you are just another memory down the gutter.
it is good that memory is a tricky thing. you have so much power over it.
sometimes you are down the slippery slope because memory is often associated with the feeling of homeliness and nostalgia. and nostalgia is sickening because when the tears dry out, and you are wearing that maroon lipstick again, you know you never wanted to have those experiences in the first place.
this is not a sad girl’s poem. we, women, are not sad anymore. we are angry.
sorry if this looked like a poem. it is not.
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