Share   Print  Save   Become a Fan

To Remember, Or To Forget
"To my friends on the Pages"

How do people live with
constant battering memories
containing agonizing pain
of mind and body,
seared souls, becoming
husks of wasted lives,
feeling...worthless, dead,
agonizing repeatedly,
living in fear and
consumed by mind’s eye?

Years, decades, eons spent
thinking, dwelling, hiding,
somehow being,

remembering, reliving,
and trying to
deal with each scene,
every painful scrap,
mountains of moments.
Take it out, or have it leap upon you,
scream and thrash,
cry, and shudder
while cringing, devastated,
soul-broken,
from the darkness
of human nature.

I have a memory
of a non-memory.

A Colorado night,
coming out of mountains,
jeep losing brakes, then

nothing.

Moaning woke me up
in a hospital room,
my own moans.
First shock,
of broken pelvis,
surge of agony, disbelief...
how, what? I have never
remembered. A blessing.

A...blessing? Yes, why not.
Why not have some memories
wiped out,
not in an empty way
but with the feeling
of a horrible experience lived
and over, but gone, faded, dissolved,
powerless, now,
to soul’s safety. Lesson
retained, but event

excised.

Why not?
How?

Without losing self?
Becoming self.

Erin Moen
8/12/02