POETRY
the opposite of nostalgia
a poem of forgetting
it plays like an indie film on a camera too shaky to hold the frames —
some teenager bought it in a consignment store for the aesthetic without thinking how the movie would actually come out —
because the film is frayed from years of neglect or maybe too much wear. maybe each loop in my head flays the plastic little by little until there’s only strings of emotions holding it together.
starbursts of memory the color of wishful thinking. lens flares from too much exposure, or just being exposed. little flashes of scenes that make no sense.
darkness. pressure. breath.
there is something inside me that remembers but won’t tell.
it says “yes there’s something here”
“yes be afraid”
“no don’t look”
but it tells my body the secret in whispers of static and chemical. i feel the messages in a tightened muscle, a raised hair. the way my breath is tight in my throat if i can’t see behind me. the way i can’t be touched.
my body says “i’ll protect you” and pumps me full of fight or flight
to make me scared of the dark, scared of being taken, scared.
there’s something so ugly inside me that even i won’t tell me, and there is nothing i can do to pry it out of me. it lives inside me, an infection. invisible but still there, still breathing, still alive, and i can’t stop thinking about the fact that i am not alone in my body.
i am not alone but i am lonely. i am out at sea and there is no land.
i drink water from the river Styx to quench a thirst that will never be slaked. i am not lazarus rising after three days journey into the afterlife and back again — i am the pigs cast into the water to drown.
Chelsea Brown, 2024
