Memory is too much a burden
Memory is too much a burden.
With this acceleration,
the requisite catalog
too much to keep.
Forgetting is a luxury. On Thursday the president proposed
we inject disinfectant. How do you write a love poem?
The birds have returned to look at us.
A robin, perched on the fence,
watches me drag a chair across the yard
to sit and read a book.
A friend’s bicycle helmet hangs on a wooden beam
now a nest for finches. I cannot
remember the sweet tobacco of my mother’s hair. I cannot
remember the tilt of your mother’s head
as she worked a hook in yarn. I cannot
remember how sunlight beams in through the tall windows,
stretches the length of the wooden floor
as we work together. I cannot remember sitting,
our elbows on the table, as we argue the succulent oranges
from their pungent, elastic skin.
-Samantha Wood
