Remembering to Forget

Trying to forget is remembering, and that is the bastard of it. I guess I'll forget when I stop remembering, and I'll stop remembering when I forget. Until then, you'll be in my psyche--in places I like to think are evaporating--in places I don't really like to go. The pictures are gone, and the words too.

I guess you could be smug about it--smug that you are still there. I guess you could be hurt--hurt that I am trying to excise that set of rooms from my brain. I don't really care. At least I tell myself that anyway. I probably do--I probably care in the same places the memories are hidden--maybe the caring is what keeps them from evaporating.

It is funny how it all works out in the end. You told me a story the first time we talked and then repeated that story, and that is the thing we spoke of the last time we talked. Now we will never talk again. I know my stories--one of them, or many--got stuck in there too--in between--but, that one story--the pattern on that old shirt you wore the first time we kissed--well, it was the one, wasn't it? The one that stood at the beginning and the end. Oh well, I should have known better--about me, and about you. I should have trusted the doubts instead of the laughter. I should have remembered then--instead of consciously forgetting--the story--the story you told me at the beginning. If I had, maybe the end would have been different.