The Poet Remembers

[Marquis]

I wrote this poem about a month ago for a woman I met online. It might not make sense without knowing our history, but I'll present it as is and let you interpret it how you want. I don't usually write poetry, but I'm rather proud of this.

I have already forgotten the person I once thought I knew;
I have forgotten your soft, inviting warmth, your wit, your appetence, your imagination, your fears;
I have forgotten the hours I spent mesmerized by your words and pictures;
The innocence, the playfulness, the subtlety, the coyness, the reverie,
the buds of hypothetical courtship that blossomed into fragrant fantasies,
the nervousness, the fear, the tension, the guilt, the hope, the guilt of hope,
the vapid promises offered like virgin sacrifices to appease the monstrous guilt,
the familiarity, the affinity, the trust, the secrets, the affection,
the kettle of attraction that boiled all the quicker from not being watched,
the impatience, the desperation, the expectations, the jealousy, the lust,
the meager morsels of submission devoured greedily by the ever increasing appetite of desire
the compromises, the realizations, the decisions, the possibilities,
the long, dreamy, exquisitely detailed descriptions of pleasures we would never know,
all these I have forgotten now.

And I have forgotten you, all memories of you too,
the excited planning, the delightful waiting, the meeting
the roses in your cheeks, the diamonds in your eyes, the honey on your breath,
the laughing, the sharing, the looking, the touching,
the unexpectedly powerful feeling of safety and belonging in your gentle embrace,
the sumptuous city night, somehow so public and so private,
the tenderness that bled from my heart and dripped like sweat through my fingers onto your head and through your earlobe,
the sweat, my sweat, your sweat, our sweat,
the succulent firmness of your taut young flesh in my hands and jaws,
the gasp let out when I first entered the body I wanted to be my home,
the tingly, slippery heat of your obedient, malleable body beneath me,
the unabashed, uninhibited, carnal feast at the table of your femininity,
the lingering taste of your parting kiss,
none of these linger in my memory now.

The hopes, the dreams, the love to build, the home to share,
the joy locked deep in my heart that I awoke to find missing,
the disbelief, the disappointment, the shame, the humiliation,
the all consuming misery that gorged itself on my mutilated ego,
the denial, the negotiation, the anger, the despair, the acceptance;
there is nothing in my memory, not even the memory.

I offered you my gaze,
and you looked shyly towards the ground.
I asked if you were mine,
and you lied politely.
I saw you drowning in a sea of guilt,
and I begged of the love God
to offer you the strength of His hand.
They say God answers all prayers,
but His answer to me was not “yes.”
Perhaps there was another,
praying harder than I.

Take heed,
the censor’s scissors will be needed,
if you play the romantic too much,
deletion,
is not a capability of yours alone.

You told me once,
I must be a poet, to understand you.
It seems you were right,
for he who remembers nothing is only the character;
it is he who forgets nothing that is the poet.