It’s on my grocery list
but I’ll probably find a way to
forget it
or
I’ll forget
the list itself and pull an old tissue
from my pocket
when I get to the produce aisle.
I’ve forgotten the nephew’s birthday and several of the niece’s,
our anniversary—
but I would never admit that to you—
and the combination to the lock
I’ve had since I was in my early twenties,
now hanging like a dustcatcher
from a nail on
the garage wall
and bought for the gym
where I was going
to get into shape...
or was that the thirties?
Anyway, it’s been a long time now,
I think.
I’m forgetting the days of the week,
because there seem to be
so many of them
anymore
and they bleed
into
one another like
the rushing blur of
scenes past a train window
as I spend more and more of my time
making sure that I work
just enough
so I can
make it to
the weekend.
Forgetting I’d already booked
my ticket and hotel
reservations for that conference in Pittsburgh
or which country my
father is living
in nowadays
or my cup of coffee
last Tuesday morning
on the back porch
so that it was waiting for me,
a still, black-eyed cyclops
reminder,
when I returned from work
or this poem in the
butterfly wing cacophony of papers all around me
and
the sound of
my mother’s voice
and the thread
of how I met a friend
and
how long that video store
on Clark Street
has been
closed...
It all seems to fade
filter out
or
dim—
dilute
under the pressure
of every new minute
just like every other new moment
until
it is simply not there
any more.
This morning
as I ran out the door
past my coffee cup
resting on my grocery list
next to the birthday card
that needed to be mailed last week,
I forgot
to say I love you.