Memories :: By yours truly.

by Hannah-Joy

And I’m frantically grasping at the memories
as if they were the last bit of string entangled about my wrist,
to a balloon that thought the sky was it’s home.
And I’ve come up with little cures.
They never do.
Cure, I mean.
Maybe ease.
But never cure.
They pump through my veins, the memories.
Twisted.
Contorted.
Smashed together like atoms in a chemistry lab.

They are a part of me.
They permeate the marrow.
The muscles and tissue.
These things.
These memories.
I couldn’t tell you the last time I lived without them.
Who does?
Live without the memories.
We suck them in filling our lungs and they reside in us.
And we let them.
We breathe them out.
We assault people.
We assault people with these… memories.
But only because they probed until we conceded.

Our stomach churns.
Our lungs feel as if hundreds of tiny butterflies are thrashing about inside,
seeping through our rib cage.
We’ve held them to our chests, these memories.
Like a mother to her newborn child.
They are ours.
They tell of the skin reddening moments of anger.
They tell of the cheeks-raw-eyes-swollen nights of sorrow.
They tell of the bursting happiness exuding from our faces.
They tell of the hardly containable grief of goodbyes.
They tell of love lost and love gained.
They tell of our attachment to the places we’ve been… and never been.

We have carried them about.
Plodding all over this world we call our home.
And then we are expected to share them?
They are mine.
My memories.
But people grab and prod at you.
They try to get inside.
They try to understand.
But they don’t.
It isn’t their fault.

You cannot wrap your mind around something that you’ve never experienced.
And people wonder why we don’t share.
They say things like, ‘Kid, life isn’t fair.’
But you have never known unfair until you are ripped into pieces by your own misgiving.
Until something… someone you love is viciously torn out of your reach.
Until you’re heart is torn out of your chest, still alive.
Still pumping.
But you are not permitted to have it back.
And so you live like this.
Why do we live like this?
Dead inside.
You search.
We search.
For something to fill that aching void.
But nothing does.
All that’s left is an empty cavity.
A hollow shadow of what was.

Take a closer look at that deep canyon.
The hole where your beating heart once resided.
That emptiness.
That darkness.
Only One Thing will ever be able to fill that pit.
What will you choose to fill it with?
More importantly who will you choose to fill it with?