Forget-Me-Not

A piece about memory and erasure—the things we hold onto, and the things that slip away.

…

It’s night now, but when I sat for breakfast, it lay open
on the table, a leatherbound journal, cream pages
covered in a woman’s hand, the writing smooth
and clean, in blue ink, but I could not read it.

The words were lithe, slipping out of mind
as soon as they entered and in their wake was
a bafflement, a blue void that with absence
spoke volumes, and its blueness was my mind.

And there, tucked dry and flat between the leaves—
a forget-me-not
stared up at me,
blue iris, black
pupil, dilated, it seemed, the eye of Ophelia, as
she receded, arms outstretched,
into cold water.

Once, she—
when I sat for breakfast,
her face was still, and broken—
each piece a blue tear,
blank at the centre.

she—

the blue eyes, seeing,
and the things seen, transformed
into blue,
a blue line
tracing an arc
across the cream.

the two eyes merge into one—
its vision ruptures and bleeds onto the cream
a slow, spreading stain of
blue, colonising the page.

but—

at its centre

is night.

---

See also: Predawn Rowers for another meditation on memory and movement.
The quiet finality in The Last Sound pairs well with this piece’s ending