Sticky Yesterdays
A poem of love & memories
Og wrote that memories are love’s best preservative —
But, do I want love dried and crispy like flowers pressed in a book?
Do I want the hugs we shared canned like the compressed, invisible wind that swishes away keyboard debris?
Do I want your scent captured like lavender, encased in a bottle, available in spray or liquid?
Do I want our laughter digitalized and replayed like oldies on the radio?
Do I want the meals we shared flash-frozen like peas, dried like jerky, or preserved like pickles?
Do I want our spring days wrapped in plastic and closeted until needed in the winter of my grief? Tell me how remembering spring in the dark of not-spring is a cure for loss, for empty, for anchorless?
If I preserve our memories, am I not entombing you? Reducing you to what I think I remember, what I believe is true, what I hope was real?
Am I not enslaving myself to memories that hold me captive, chained by a fading love, while you move through life unencumbered?
No, I do not want love preserved like a long-dead body embalmed to look as it did in a life no longer being lived, in a time long passed, in a reality that’s now a personal fiction.
I’d rather not have the memory of spring in the dark of winter, for my longing of flowers and cool streams grows larger, longer, deeper, stronger, and unconsolable in the cold, blue night.
I’d rather be memoryless, free of what used to be and is no longer.
I’d rather be unshackled by a love that may exist but not as it was and will never be again and maybe, never was.
My love will not be preserved, saved, safeguarded, or stored in wispy memories.
I’d rather it be freed, forgotten like the summer butterfly when leaves turn yellow.
Or, laid in water streaming to someplace that isn’t the empty here.
Or, burned to ash, blown perhaps, to where you are or far away from there.
Or, maybe, I’ll lay love to rest in a ceremony, allowing it to move to another life, another dream, another me, another you.
Og was wrong.
Preserving love in memories creates a sticky mess of yesterdays.
Og Mandino: Memories. Love’s best preservative.
In response to this Love prompt from David S.:
