I Keep Forgetting

who were you, anyhow

I didn’t willfully start out forgetting you. It was something that just happened, an occurrence that took place over time, little by little, so I didn’t notice it was happening until someone asked me about you and it took me a minute to recall all the details necessary to answer the question.

I had to be nudged to remember. You’re no longer something that’s at the forefront of my brain, no longer a constant amid the myriad memories I need to keep handy. And while I can recall you if prodded, it gets harder and harder to remember all the necessary things about you that I’d need to forge a memory. I’ve forgotten years worth of stories, left them in a corner somewhere I don’t have to look at them. They’re probably gathering dust and cobwebs now, the pages of whatever book we wrote turning yellow and brown, the colors of soft bruises.

I forgot what you look like. I forgot the color of your hair, the color of your eyes, the very weight of you. I don’t remember the sound of your voice, what your whisper was like or how you sounded when mad. I just remember that the whispers were less frequent than the times you turned your volume all the way up. I don’t remember what was said.

There are months and years that are blank now, places where I rubbed a metaphorical eraser so hard I made a hole in the notes that made up our lives, leaving just a small smudge. Anything that happened in those times is gone. With forgetting you, I’ve forgotten it all — the springs, the summers, the autumns I love so much. There’s some winter left, but those days are dark and hard to see.

I forgot what your hands felt like, I just remember that you were rough with them sometimes, how they felt on my throat, but I no longer remember how it felt when you slipped your hand in mine or when you touched me with grace. I don’t remember embraces or the filled space in my bed.

I used to listen to music that reminded me of you and be overcome with sadness, become full of emotions that felt like someone poking holes in my soul. I can listen to that music again because I no longer remember what it was that made me sad. There’s just a blackness, a void where you used to be, where we used to be.

I am robbed of those years. By erasing you, I erase everything around you, the smudges of what remain too messy to create an alternate tale from. I pick up the pieces of what’s left but they are tainted and I don’t want them in my hands. I choose to forget everything rather than remember any of it at all.

I have forgotten all but your name. Even then, the feel of it on my tongue is foreign and sour. I try not to speak it, ever. When asked about you, I will reach for your name but that is all I will grasp. I will not remember the clothes you wore, the food you liked to eat, the shows you watched. I will not remember anything we did together or the way we fell apart.

We have no common ground on which to rest our memories. There was nothing shared, nothing that is part of each of us to remind me of you when all I want to do is forget. If it is a disservice to you to pretend those years did not exist, it was as much a disservice to me that they did.

I would cut you from photographs but there are none left, none of the forced smiles that only you and I knew were feigned. Those photos are gone, along with all the other mementos of what we were supposed to be.

There are ashes of burnt pictures. There are chapters missing from a book, pages torn and made small, scattered in far corners. When asked about you, I will not remember. Everything is gone.

It is impossible to erase you entirely, because I am made in part of what we endured. But it is possible to forget the details that make you real. I have forgotten you.