this remembrance is an ache (i have to carve it from me each day in order to keep going)

i.

i’m poor and they’re all rich. one of them gives me

five hundred dollars for my birthday—“because it’s a milestone.”

what do i do with five hundred dollars?

i don’t remember the way you

cared about me (i remember it not happening), but

what do i do with this? it feels

important and big, like

it should matter. does it

matter to you? do you remember

anything about me? can i even accept this when

i know you don’t care at all about me?

ii.

my mom said that mary was off today—

like she’d been drinking all morning. “but,” i said,

“she seemed normal, to me.” a beat. “i guess

“that says a lot about our relationship, if that’s normal to me.”

my mom and i laughed. the thought

that her being crazy drunk is a normal “mary”

to me—it made me ill.

iii.

i texted you, asked how you

were. you said you were good and asked how

i was. i said i wasn’t

great. you asked why, and i guess i

just wanted to feel like

we were what we used to be (close) (friendly) (talking

(to each other, still), but i explained

how i’m in a wheelchair now, and that

i haven’t been able to walk. the conversation ended after

i answered your question—“are you

“still having the issues?” like. i don’t know what, but it

kind of hurt me when you said it like

that, in the same way that a papercut hurts

when you squeeze it and watch the

blood pool, and then squirt some lemon juice on it—and

i’ve only asked you how you‘re doing

once since then. i don’t want to keep

slicing myself open for the

chance to talk to you, but, man, if

it isn’t tempting. i’m always thinking

about what we used to do,

what we used to say,

the things we used to have,

and the way we used to be, like this will

make you come back to me. like

it will change a thing.

iv.

trying something new to help

with the pain. i feel overstretched, overdone,

like i’m going to collapse with

the weight of everything. i wonder

if this will touch that—if,

in seeking solution to the

physical, i might find

something to give me a hand with these

heavy things.

i miss the certainty of

growing up healthy. i miss knowing

and having plans for my future. i miss having

the certainty in your capabilities required to save up for something like

moving out and becoming independent.

i miss not having to talk about

someone needing to take care

of me for the rest of my life, and having to

ask for help to even just move a cup of water. i miss

not being sick. i miss being okay. i miss the time where i was sick and

needed this help and was still a kid. i miss it i miss it i miss it and

i feel so awful for it, because i know it isn’t

the end of the word, but, man, if i didn’t lose more than just my mobility

when i got sick, if i didn’t lose more than just the average use of my

joints when i was born. i can’t

take it, some days, just how much i lost.

v.

the pain is still the same. it’s not

helping. what else can i do—

can i please just catch a break?

vi.

if you’ve been drunk this whole time and

you forget most of what happens,

will you remember this

and will you remember me and

will you remember us and

should i even bother holding on

to something you’ll probably forget by

tomorrow’s hangover?

vii.

i have her letters and everything i kept from

my time with her—it’s in a box, taped shut or folded over,

i can’t remember. it’s all in there, though. i

sometimes wish i’d thrown it out, but

more often than that i’m proud to say

i’ve forgotten where it is or

that it’s there.

or, at least, that’s what i wish i could write.

i really mean:

i have your letters and everything i kept from

my time with you—it’s in a box, each flap folded

over in a careful manner. it’s all there, every written note

and stamped letter and silly momento. i sometimes wish

i’d thrown it out, but more often than that i hate to say

i’d like to open it up and go through it and

write you a letter, or call you up and ask if

you’d like to have a sleepover or lunch or just go

to the library together. i always know the box and its contents

are there, on top of my dresser and

buried behind forty books and hidden under

other boxes and binders. i still remember the smell of you,

the way your hand feels in mine, the way your

voice sounds, the books and authors you like to read,

the way you like your beets and the way that night feels

at your house, under your covers, bathed in golden light and

reading our books with the cool night air coming

in through the open window from a starry blackened sky, and the

way your table shines with a layer of grease and your kitchen smells of bacon

in the mornings and hamburger grease at night, and the sound of

the evening news in the living room from where i stood in the kitchen, and the way the carpet feels under my toes and the way the plants and birds and walls

smell and feel and look, and the way the dust falls through the air in your

house and the way the afternoon comes through the windows and the trees

with a blue-green tint at four pm on a cool october afternoon, and the

way the trees and ivy yellow and green, and the sound of

the guinea hens, and the sound of cars on the gravel of your

driveway, and the smell of hay and horse shit in the horse pen, and the way you

have me water the plants and feed the birds, and the way the plants along

your driveway are mandarins and not oranges, and the way i can’t

forget a thing about you but you could forget all about me.

that’s what i mean. that’s how it is.

viii.

i want to make my own memories that i can’t seem to forget.

i want to remember forever and ever playing with the kids,

holding the cat, sitting in the dark of my room writing while

everyone else sleeps, getting crushes, helping friends,

making people smile, silly jokes, good music, eating nice

foods. i want to remember the good things, the things that might not hurt me

as much as the thought that you could

not know me at all and not

remember a part of us

while i remember

everything about you.