My Memory

Trigger Warning: references to rape and self-harm.

My Memory. 

Is not like a sieve 

The manholes in the street 

Waiting for me to walk by 

Open in time for the stretch of consciousness 

To trip and fall headfirst down into the matrix that is 

The sewer of life. 

Nostalgia is not as pleasant as rose tinted, 

Beige glimpses into 

A past of sweet memory 

But rather a vastness of space 

My memory is not like a sieve 

It is a heart monitor 

Recalling rhythms of crisis and depression 

Recognising the spikes and meticulous plunges

Into a great void 

Reminiscence recalls things like  

The first time I was honest about my rape  

Seventeen in the guidance counsellor’s office,  

I told her that I sometimes use rough sandpaper against my skin,  

sand down the rough edges of my life.

Drawing air into her mouth,  

She replies  to my life

With a grimace and a frown,  

Attempting to compress her face,  

Her cheeks puff out, 

Applying a soft fleshy layer of protection.

Her eyes meet mine,  

As she leans  away from me  

Trying to avoid the barbed wire edges

Of my being.

My memory is not like a sieve 

It does not misplace everything 

It loses the things I wish it didn’t 

And memorises all, I wish it 

Lost.

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