A better stranger

Residual fragments,

millions of them,

scattered about and left to the birds.

How do you take back the years?

How do we become what we resist

and forget everything we crave?

How can I make a better stranger of you?

Let the Polaroids shake clear my head

like an old etch-a-sketch and fade sweet moments into foggy recollections.

As the little nostalgias of our personal heaven slowly fall to the trenches of my absent memory, I don’t want to forget.

I reach out, still holding onto whatever part of you that I can because your memories reside in my heart.

So In the night when my head is cloudy

and the northern lights can’t guide me

to cloud 9, I’ll close my eyes and listen to the rhythm of my heart beat.

Like footsteps on a wood floor, walking closer and closer until you’re standing

in front of me;

until I can’t separate reality and fantasy,

or maybe I don’t want to.

Dizzy spells from spinning around your finger and dancing in your hair,

purposely Forgetting to forget you

while toiling in nostalgia’s mysterious attractions. How they seem to conjure up a familiar pain. A hurt that feels like home.

A tough love that makes you love harder.

So whether or not I need to forget,

I’ll always carry a piece of you in my love,

because the way you defined the word still resonates with my inner

hopeless romantic.