Birthdays

Forgot mine this year
when did they become a chore

I laughed
as a child
at that ridiculous
plot hole
how could anyone forget their birthdays

and why

Now I laugh at that child

they are easy to unremember

I spent mine this year
in an emergency room

watching glass-cut flesh get sewn
how fragile
everything is
even that certainty I once held

Nobody
Nobody forgets their own birthday

Why I write

long after I know no one else comes to visit, but me
it is because
when I revisit the things I once wrote
that old familiar yet strange me
still stirs fresh emotions
and because
I know
it still means something to me
after that time, the distance
that is why I write
not for anyone else to read, or to impress,
but to reconnect with an old feeling, a place, a fleeting
fancy
It is a testament to the things I've once seen, heard, and thought
no longer

That is why I write
to get at that space
that time and forgetfulness quite easily replace

I write because I once was, and is still here

Yes, our existence, like so many footprints in the sand
why does it matter what where how why

But because I wrote. It is a consolation: that what where how why
mystery that we are
doesn't mean a thing
but that I wrote I was there
that is a fact too
just as I was here, is here, and may not be there
was born, am living, will die
I wrote.

That is a fact too.

Three years

the last note
and
this

A space

between
which

365 days times two plus five months and eight days fell
among lost words, forgotten tears, and things too sentimental to want

to remember

the space too

where some young part of me ballooned and wilted

eternally like lives of a mushroom


in some god forgotten space

between that last note

and this