First published online for the RUSSH 2024 Literary Showcase & forthcoming in Two Spoons Press ‘Issue 1: Brave’
neuronal threads seep
through fingertips
strands spilling slipping
short circuiting
hold
.
for rewiring
.
as I lose my chain of thought
.
and rewrite this
I promise I’m circling for an answer
to your ever so polite question;
how was your week?
you see my corneas glaze
as lines previously tugged
with ease
allude cramping hands
fibrous shadows drift
lonely into the chasm
shapeless static — blank
blank blank blink
these amnesiac scars burn
language misfiring
evident by my vacant stare
up to the left above your head
that you misinterpret
as needing a good night sleep
not to be mistaken as unsocial
I’m the one clicking cameras
not to withdraw, to capture
piecing fractured
fragments into mosaic
a mixed tape of moments
momentous to mundane
crafted by the notoriously
unreliable narrator
we call memory
Fated to erase skew judge
fragile ephemeral essential
to we the storytellers
the meaning-makers
I forget who I was before now
what I used to know
they reassure me it’s the norm
in my situation
but what about my mum
she too squeezes her cheeks
excavating her archive
burrowing for retrieval
tests inconclusive, come back
when you have forgotten
your daughter’s name
whilst gaps remain
pages lay splayed
others fill in
your blank spaces
colour me mindfully
colour me tenderly
colour me truly
for you are colouring my identity