I once said to someone that writing requires an ability to recall a moment, a feeling, a person in an instant. To re-enter the past and all we experienced there, then step back into the present. Thus, it is possible to live with much experience and emotion close to the surface of your skin yet not live trapped in the past.

It’s muscle memory; the ability to recall, interpret and re-create those moments into new moments. It requires some remembering and some deliberate forgetting.

I saw a man in the corner of my eye the other day who may or may not have been worth remembering or forgetting but I walked quickly away; without giving myself the chance to change my mind. I think now, in reflection, he is better to be forgot.

At the crosswalk I chose to not look behind me although I was certain I could see his shadow catching up.

Regardless of what we wish for; it’s remembering that happens so fast and forgetting that takes so long.

This was born on an airport concourse, while I was travelling forward. I stopped and breathed and this time, I was not caught.

i.

Remember is quicker than Forget

on the track of a mind.

You are easy

to forget to think about

if I walk quickly in a forward direction

if I do not look back

– I do not think to think about you.

I do not write you down, I do not imagine words to shape you

Out of the nothing, back to the mind. 

I do not remember to make you from memory, I would not remember to forget. 

I leave nothing in memoriam, but everything is left behind regardless; in nothing-ness.

But – if I stop or pause,

if catching my breath on an airport concourse

at a train station;

driven but not driving and left to wonder

interrupted by a red light –

if I do not propel myself forward from you 

in every moment unceasing;

then Remember is quicker than Forget – and catches up to me.

I encounter the memory of you
who taps me on the shoulder, 

I collide with you, the thought and thinking of you. 

Remember is so quick, Forget so slow.