Bad Poetry Weekend #17: We Need A Brain Liposuction Machine Stat

I have a love-hate relationship with memories. Sometimes I think they keep you alive; other times I’m certain they’re responsible for too many emotional assaults, or death at worst. The most interesting thing though is the memories that we don’t make – powerful stuff that lives in a third space, the kind that haunts you, almost like the ghost of the parallel universe.

In this Bad Poetry Weekend piece, that is the prompt: the memories we didn’t make. Somehow I taste grief, the way it rolls in my tongue. Maybe because there is what if associated with these memories, something we’ll never know, something that passed us by when we weren’t looking. Too bad, I guess, but it is what it is, isn’t it?

The Memories We Didn’t Make

Tonight I think of the memories we didn’t make.
The thrill of bringing you home to meet my parents over the summer,
of hearing you tell them you love their daughter,
how this time it’s real, how it’s different with me.
You said you’re ready and I tore up in joy, surprised.
The long walks by the beach you looked forward to,
our feet in the sand leaving a pair of footprints behind,
us holding hands like the universe belongs to us and nobody else matters.
The fun we’re supposed to have locked in a room somewhere, just you and I.
I was stupid excited to kiss you, swim in your eyes, be with you again.
But five days more and you broke my heart and every light within.
Tonight I hurt for the memories we didn’t make.
I can’t make them; I can’t unmake them for you’ve gone too far,
and I’m left here with this exercise in agony,
with all these mementos of what should have been but never will be.

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Photo taken from here.