Remembering Is Bleeding

Remembering is letting memories bleed into each other — stain the fabric of time — while the past cascades into a longing for a more direct itinerary, wherein the tenses, the inflections of time, take the shape of the very senses we experienced in those memories — so much so that when we pick up a faint scent of something that we perceive as all too familiar, we proceed to reminisce over faraway times and let the way we scrutinize them — our memories — dictate how our senses bleed into each other. It's more than synesthesia — it's when the overwhelming presence of one sense is indicative of the absence of another, like when the sound of music resonates more in the dark — the music breaks heavier in the wake of light, and fills its recess. 

Memories are an ever-changing hierarchy of the senses. 

I was sitting in the passenger seat, 

adjusting the volume in between our clamors. 

We had miles to go, and I only wished 

for our destination to grow further away, 

for us to take long, insidious detours — 

if only to be enveloped in a moment that 

becomes more than a moment, 

becomes something tangible, like a day. 

We drove to a lake; 

We drove toward eternity; 

We sent ripples 

Through placid water. 

The light is dying; 

outside, the headlights blur in a rush 

like the image a camera produces 

when it just couldn't focus in time. 

There aren't any still images, 

just portraits. 

The same sky that 

I looked to for solace was now 

riddled with exit wounds. 

For a day, I just took it for what it was, 

the final backdrop to a moment. 

The nostalgia for the now 

it creped in before I even left the car 

before this night fully realized, 

It felt like a universe. 

I see the sky when I close my eyes;

The walls of my memory, 

I couldn't wipe the stains off them. Still, I’ve outlived the youngest of nights.