Remember

Sometimes the sadness curls up

Right inside that hollow part of me

You know the one

Maybe it’s been there all along or maybe we cultivated it

Somewhere along the way with sidewalk chalk and crushed butterflies

All I know is I am gasping here

All I know is sometimes, all the lights turn off and the glow in the dark stars reveal everything I had tried to forget everything

Everything that plays and skips in my mind like the vinyl in the record player

All the sadness

All those crushed butterflies and tragic moments and sad faces and taught eye skin

Clenched for tears

Tight lipped delivery of bad news, every rainy day every spilled coffee

Every failure every time I have ever been broken

Sometimes

Everything piles up like a library of blackness and it’s hard

It’s hard to remember the sun, the stars, the smiles pulling at the corners of my lips

The blush, the butterflies, the beauty of her eyes

Sometimes it’s easy to forget

Sometimes all I can see is the way you looked at me, the way you knew and I didn’t, the way you were poised to tell me

The way I came home to find you heaped, curled on the sofa

The way every inch of life was drained from your eyes

The way you surrendered to loss like flame to breath

The way the sorrow washed over us, disbelief dripping from my eyes sometimes

Sometimes that sorrow flies back to me and it’s hard to remember

The feel of her skin, the feeling of being alive

The electricity that means I’m still fighting

Sometimes I forget

But all I need from you is to hold me until I remember

Help me remember