PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

I don’t want to unsee you

but I want to unlearn you.

I want to unlearn

the way the skin around your eyes

reaches toward me when you smile.

You slip past me without a sound

and it feels like a rug burn.

You emerge from behind the curtain

laughing as hard as you ever have

and it feels like I’m missing

something as fleeting as a shooting star or

the moment I fell in love with you.

I want to unlearn this ache,

throw strangers into a mixing bowl

till I can’t remember the difference

between his laugh and yours,

I want to pour them all over forgiveness

and smile until all my face muscles crack.

This is not something I can say at five in the morning

after a night of rewinding

your gazes and fleeting realness in the chorus of laughter stepping toward insanity,

playing you back over and over and over again

This is not something I can say

after I’ve watched you flinch when I shift toward you,

this is something I’ll have to leave behind.

Stirring up peace beyond the shadows,

after all this magic

I’ll turn back the dial to the normal sparks,

I’ll rewind the story to the part where we were unsure

you know I’d rather be skimmed over than forgotten,

I’d rather be curled up a lightyear behind you than alone,

I’d rather stretch my fingers toward you even though I’ll never reach

than use them like splintering revivals to stir up all these pasts.