Forget Me Not (You Already Have)

I’m aging and I’m taking my mind with me. My memories aren’t as limber as they used to be. Vivid recollections with sharp sounds, snap-crackle-pop, are muffled ghosts of themselves. Some days I have to go scuba diving just to fish out the plot of a book I read a month ago. My brain is puddling jelly on the ocean floor. The things I could remember are breaking the surface belly-up, their white undersides shrivelling under the sun.

I imagine my memory as a forest; my childhood an island. Slowly but surely, I have uprooted all but the most stubborn tree from that island. The forest is withering away, suspended, in the purgatory between now and death. Every so often, brave new branches shoot out of the thick mulch of my subconscious and wave about, only to become covered by an unforgiving layer of brain fog.

Why is it that I can quote, ad verbatim, a nightmare I once had as a seven year old, but can’t recall the title of the book I picked up last month? Do you know I once bought three copies of the same book because I couldn’t remember having read it? It was like reliving the worst first date thrice. That book stays planted in sandy soil; it never took root.

They say vapor ruins recollections. Maybe I’ve sealed off people, moments, and books in a pineapple-mint flavoured haze. There’s a tendril of truth there. To what do I attribute my city’s collective amnesia than the lung-charring blanket of smog that greywashes it each winter?

Each year, happy mourners lay summer to rest, its body entombed in burning soil, and plan for colder months. How do we forget, year after year, that the sky packs its bags every winter? For all we know, there’s nothing above the concrete layer that seals the city. The smog hides us from the eyes of God and the arms of the sun. And it makes us forget.