Read an earlier version of the opening piece of my lyric essay -in progress published by A Women’s Thing.
How to Lose Your Memory, How to Never Get it Back
In your former life, so you're told, you were wild.
You threw yourself down stairs to end a pregnancy,
dropped out of school to marry, though your parents begged,
even though the wedding never happened, just more
unplanned pregnancies, only you started keeping them.
In your current life—after the accident—you’re not learning
quickly. Your kids speak for you, they raise you. When
they come home from school ask them: What did you learn
today? They are patient. Reply: Do we know any Indians?
Who's Abraham Lincoln? What was the Holocaust?
More and more, you manage on your own. You can add
simple numbers, no longer label the bleach POISON
to keep from confusing it with milk. But now existing
doesn't feel like enough. You have learned about love
and can't unlearn it. Nights you walk the halls
of your supposed home, opening drawer after drawer,
hoping to find something, anything, that belongs to you.