Forget, Forgot, Forgotten

Some of my writing over the summer...

Forget, Forgot, Forgotten
I grew up around abandoned things. Shells and remains feel like forget forgot forgotten. Empty Outer Spaces. A crater sized pit carved out of red earth dug up by a previous occupant who wanted to leave their imprint in my back yard. My earliest memories sink into me like all the other abandoned things. At age five or six, I would wake in the afternoon to a house still and quiet. I would call out for anyone, and when they didn't come I would stand at the window crying. Sometimes I would scream in my crying, afraid the emptiness would empty me. I would press my face so hard against the glass just to know that I was still existing, not satisfied until my breath left a damp smudge of fog on the windowpane. Eventually someone would walk through the front door. I would run to them carrying every feeling I had ever felt or would feel. Heart broken tiny smashed toy, arms reaching extended and open. No one ever understood how I felt the air escape my lungs, blood drain from my heart like suddenly someone had pulled a plug on all my life and love sent fleeing from my body through my eyelashes and out my tear ducts. No one ever understands. They just hunch their shoulders up towards theirs ears in a shrug, and when their shoulders fall the impact sends tremors like shame through my open still empty arms. Leaving me cold. Eyelashes long and lucky they say, holding in all that dampening sad. An insect shell sits on my desk shuffling back and forth with each breath sucking in and sighing out. I'm always grasping at emptiness. I pull it over me like a blanket. I warm up to the void, and feel out deserted landscapes with pale lined palms and fingertips smoothing the way ahead. Feeling in the dark, the bare space of your back, the scent of your skin that extends from your shoulder to the curve of your neck. I move slowly through the empty rooms at Sundown. Shallow scattered beams withdraw their shadows and slink behind the half opened curtain until there is just me standing in a room with no light. A cigarette still burns and the red orange ash sighs. I inhale. My forehead rests against the windowpane glass. I feel the cool outside air on my cheek at the corner of my mouth. I breathe in your absence until every inch of me is full and filled again with forget forgot forgotten.