I remember a white door — I remember it was the hibiscus winter — I remember thinking I had been comatose a thousand years, though this is surely false, and in my uncorroborated absence the whole fungible world in a moment of chemical agony had changed in irreversible ways — I remember how everything tasted dark — I remember things I’ve never felt — a seagull feather brushing my lips, a turquoise shell, my shoulders festooned with flowers — I remember thinking what was in my mind was put there by others, by books I read, by objects I looked at but did not own — I remember wondering if other memories remained in the twilight regions of my mind where my failed loves were soil, and if soon someone would enlighten me to things I had done and then, years later, I would remember them as real — I remember tender hands covered in snow — I remember the city, the flames immanent as flowers, patient to burst forth — I remember my favourite word once was —
Thomas Heise, closing lines to “Recollection,” from Moth; or how I came to be with you again (Sarabande Books, 2013)
