to remember you
it would take a journey
a pilgrimage to forgetting
everything
that has ever been
walk footsteps like black ink over the pages of the
diaries of a young girl
years and years
blotting out what may have been
and
at the end of my walking
i would find my home at the end of the world

and paint a sign above the entrance
ALL THAT IS LEFT
and this would be true
and after everything else was erased
there would just be an unmade bed
and a pair of worn out shoes
old french newspapers and
an open jar of peach preserves
and that would be me
the shoes the sheets the jar of jam
with a notebook
and poetry


my home
my cloister
and without giving it the weight and importance of a name
i would know it as the empty place

at night
by firelight
i would trace on the walls the continents from memory
while the sea crashed at my gate
and the wind howled taunting contradictions
sleep and wake
remember and forget
kicking purple sand across the far laying beach

in this solitude
in the emptiest
lonliest
most far away place
i could find

where i could scratch 
THE END BEGINS HERE
into my sandy threshold
and it would be true
when
i am only
old bedsheets and shoes
newspapers and jam
items
so inconsequential
so silent and still
that i am translucent
and the moonlight could fall upon my wrist and find no excess of life there
to stop it from shining through

only then

i could
finally
slowly

quietly
gently
allow back in 
with its mighty thundrous footsteps
the memory of you

you the world
whose map i draw from memory
you 
the notebook and the poetry

you and me
the marked up pages a song
sung alone over years of walking
with lines
of the old sheets and newspapers and jam
and how they once were new
and then
and in the chorus
wholly silent
i could finally remember you

then the bluebirds went ballistic
and all the kids in the park
cheered for the five who were running down the field
the fat one left standing alone in the middle
half bent overhis fingers splayed on his knees
his breath having taken him as far as it could go
half watched them runhalf cheeredand half stared at the grass
considering the possibility that it might be his final resting place
and then turned his eyes back up to the sky
there was a stain of blue on the side of his tshirt
and i thought
either his mother was careless in doing the laundry
or he had to wash his own clothes
and that thought
since he wasn't more than eight years old
and his shoes not as nice as the other kids
made me feel bad for calling him fat

but the bluebirds went ballistic
and i had to notice the rainbow
they seemed to be pulling out of the cespool of downtown with the strength of their beaks and
tiny hollow boned wings
you bluebirds
i thought
put me to shame
with your pride
and follow through
with chirps like that promising rainbows
and then here they are
my own rainbows
for me and the fat kid
the only two who missed the winning goal
because we were staring at the sky