Sunday, November 4, 2012

A Lonely Guide to Forgetting People:

(Warning: this is difficult and teary and requires willpower
because people are hard, and they will make you fall in love with them.)

1. When you leave, do not look back. Do not turn your head or your shoulders.
Point your chin. Walk.

2. Forget the photos, and the way you laughed. Fill letters with memories
and put them into boxes. Put those boxes in the attic.
Do not look at them for years.

3. Cry until you are red faced and shaking and your fingers will not
slow down from clenching and unclenching. Leave nail marks on
your skin. Remember how it feels to hurt, remember that you will
not always feel this way.

4. Take walks in places you have not been, run until your feet hurt
and your soles are aching and you are lost in forests or parks or
night time trail rides.
(with someone who is not the person you want to forget).

5. Look for magic, in books and airplanes and hidden places like
secret gardens and parks and those cats, the ones you don't know,
the ones who rub their heads against your calves and purr.
Let that feeling fill you like warm milk.

6. Write it down. Burn it. Write it again. You will be a bundle of
nerves, accept it, move on. Hold onto the edges of your skin,
tighten your arms around your organs, make sure they do not
fall out.

7. Beautiful things exist everywhere, you are a star and the boy
over there is another and that woman and that little girl.

8. Remember you will be happy again, remember to breathe.

(If you have forgotten: inhale, exhale, expand, be balloon like, be beautiful).

2 comments:

  1. My darling! This is utterly beautiful, and it makes me teary on the last part, I wish this list never had to end and that there will be a lot more of things to say, to advice, to give. I love you. Forgetting is such a lonely word, how I wish we never have to be forgotten or never have to forget the ones that are/will always be beautiful to us.

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  2. oh i love this.
    wow.
    this....... this hits close.
    reminds me of old pains.

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