If memory keeps the past planted, forgetting wilts, kills and decomposes. That’s the point. 

I forget how white knuckles clenched the orange scissors used to separate hair onto bathroom tiles and turned them onto my chest with a pressure like death. 

I forget how he raged and spat, hurricaned into school portraits that exploded in shards on the family room carpet stained with memory so that he could kill the smile of his daughter.

I forget how her fingers fumbled over my cocooned limbs, unyielding to the tears and apologies she wanted to fall into my palms and penetrate my heart. 

I forget the splinters that crazed fists shoved into my flesh, the pencil used to draw blood instead of pictures and the chilled fear that engineered them both. 

I forget the rolling blade, meant to slice steaming pizza in a kitchen, a home, not the skin that protected her stomach, lungs, and heart from a cruel world. 

I forget how it feels to have water flow down my face from a swollen soul instead of swollen clouds

I forget the shattered, the cracked, the aching, the wars I didn’t win and the enemy I only suffocated. 

So why is it all so very easy to remember?