Forget-Me-Not

Forget-Me-Not

Melody notices forget-me-not

because her mother loved it.

Pale knot, a name I’ve forgotten

until Melody brings it back.

Memory survives not in our brains

but in time, ever present, future, & past.

One midnight I wake next to a stranger,

lie cautious & listening, knowing 

the drug’s drone, the body’s ache.

Next shot, I collect T-shirt & jeans,

tiptoe between men on coil-shot couches.

Pan to a streetlight @ Otis & Pearl,

panhandle a dime for the phone.

A long time ago 

doesn’t mean it’s harder to remember.

What’s found on the stoop of an orphanage

marks the soul’s handoff

from one tired body to a fresh one,

or not tired, merely surprised.

The child asks, “What happens

at a funeral? What goes in the hole?”

& after, “I didn’t know about coffins.

I thought the dirt fell in the dead person’s eyes.”

“I was 30,” says Melody, “when my mother died.”

Because she doesn’t touch the flower

I touch it for her. 

The pattern on a turtle’s shell 

remembers every other, yet each is unique, 

a life shell grown inside a birth shell 

from memory all turtles share.

I don’t tell her

how carefully we close the body’s eyes.