It’s the rot of the familiar
The sickly sweet smell
Nostalgia and a headache
Yearning and a heartbreak
And deterioration sets its course
Maggots on your christening dress
And the pages
Of mom's old photo books all
Crumpled and torn
Drifting on your homemade raft you were so proud of
Home away from home
Or
Away from home
All your assurance set in youth cripples
And at that self determination and resilience
They told you you were so smart
So kind
So independent
But now that independence hangs on you like a newborn child hungry and smelling like
Newness
That newborn child suddenly six
Playing the game of whys
An endless path you fall down until
You land somewhere in your head that
There is no reason why
And you set your course
Too determined
And now
All that sweet gentle soft pink
You enveloped yourself in
Scorched at the edges
Your heart telling you so often and so loudly
That you were meant to leave
And all the remains in your wake are
Trivial nothings
Ruining all you left there
That music box
Sometimes you’d make it sing in the dark
Just to scare yourself
Now what more of it but damp weak wood
Are you more than skin and bones
Holding so tightly on to the figurative
And imagined
That’s what it is
The leaving and forgetting
by
Mary Papillion
