all the things I have forgotten
September 15, 2026
I have always wanted to be an author.
Not of children’s books, because even though I have been one and had one, I don’t know that my voice (or content at times) is meant for people under the age of 18; or people who haven’t had their heart torn apart and then sewed back together. Or people who don’t know what fuck means (or aren’t allowed to say it). Plus, Im not so into short stories.
Not of Fiction or autobiography. Although a fiction novel has my heart, I don’t know that creating worlds is my forte. So much of what I love to put words to is real, factual, authentic. I’m sure it’s my own special type of childhood trauma, but being laid out for all to see is just something about writing that makes me giddy. Which puts Autobiography up there as a candidate. If it weren’t for format —and format is everything.
No, my joy has always been poetry.
Prose specifically. A biographical excavation of one’s soul for everyone to see, and judge, and understand — maybe. A little log of everything I’ve ever felt hard or deep enough to commit to paper and words. A little history of myself and the life I have created. (Meaning that my writing often has little boundary and I guess, for that, you are WELCOME!)
What gets cataloged into my words are the very best and very worst of things; of me. Not everyone loves it, but at least it’s honest.
I have poem after poem of being mad at my husband; and poem after poem of how in love I am with everything that he is and isn’t. I have poems about how my daughter is the best thing that has ever happened to me, and about how for so long I let her down. Poems about my deep hatred and deep compassion, for the people that gave me life. Poems about how angry I have been, and how happy. Poems about nothing, and of course poems about everything. It’s all there.
I even have poems about everything I have forgotten. In case I ever want to remember…
(Content note: The poem below contains references to childhood trauma, sexual experiences, substance use, and domestic violence.)
all the things I have forgotten
(maybe part 1)
When I was under 6 we would visit my Godmother in Utah.
Her house wasn’t open concept.
The front door opened up to a living room, dipped down into a lowered-den-like-conversation-pit,
but filled with toys for us kids; gates to lock us in.
The guest rooms were up open-backed stairs to the second floor,
opposite a sliding glass door that led to a roof with no railing.
Early in the morning my sister and I would listen for snoring,
and if the coast was clear open the sliding door and dare each other to creep closer and closer to the edge.
Just to see how far we could go before we got scared.
Just to see how far we could go before we ran back for safety.
I don’t remember who won? Who got closest before sprinting back?
I do remember that the edge was tempting; that all I wanted to do was get close enough to look over. — even if I had to belly crawl.
All I wanted was to see. Not to get burned.
Not to jump.
— but to stand near the edge and feel the tingle of what-if run over my skin.
At the beginning of Middle School I befriended a girl named Crystal.
I went to get a root beer from the kitchen during a sleepover at her house and came back to her bedroom door cracked open.
Small bits of light poured out and four girls sat on each corner of a fifth.
— but how did she float like that?
Light as a feather, stiff as a board. Light as a feather, stiff as a board. Light as a feather, stiff as a board.
I ran to the kitchen and dialed home. My mother was there within the hour; some excuse about my sister.
She didn’t smell the hard lemonades on the girls’ breath.
She never knew that she saved me from underwear-in-the-ice-box embarrassment had I stayed.
But I never forgot how I saw that girl float just whispers above the floor
— and how quick my heart beat at the excitement of it all.
In 7th grade I wanted more than anything for Matthew to love me.
I fancied myself a witch and wished spells into dandelion seeds as I blew them into clouds.
I offered myself on a pedestal. Asked advice from strangers.
— “Be anything but yourself,” they said.
I stopped.
How would I know if he liked me for me if I was anything but?
How would I know if anyone did? Would? Had?
I made a vow to never again be someone I was not in the name of love or friendship— hate or lust.
I’ve broken it many times since then, but always found my way back.
It’s my husband’s least and most favorite quality about me.
On a chorus field trip in 8th grade, I sat next to Jonathan on the bus.
My heart was giddy and my thighs were pulsing.I racked my brain to find ways to let him touch me,
to make him want to.
I ached. Pined. Perished.
I placed my head on his shoulder and held my chest, told him I was just so tired.
— that the only way I could sleep was if held me.
I placed his hand on top of mine, under my shirt, under my bra.
And we sat there, heads together.
Nothing happened, just skin to skin.
Nothing happened, just childlike lust
and pulsing thighs and deep breaths
that come with knowing that this is as far as we were willing to go.
In my 20’s, just after my daughter was born, I fell in love.
With the mirror. With a boy.
I spent my days in a makeshift living-room-sized play-pen,
my evenings laughing & smoking cigarettes at coffee shops with friends,
and my nights in his arms.
I would laugh and flip my hair, flirt and steal the attention from everyone I could.
A fiend. A thief. An addict. Just begging for one more hit
— one more instant where all eyes were on me.
We sat there one night deep in conversation and me mid sentence
— my reply just a ploy to get my voice in the mix; to shift the eyes and attention to me.
Something cute. Something dumb. A little laugh.
The admiration in his eyes turned cold,
“You can’t rely on your looks forever—” and a warning that I was treading water
that my looks had been used for so long in place of where my mind had never developed.
— funny enough I’ve forgotten the exact words, but not the intent.
How cruel. How kind.
Exactly. (Oh, but I have forgotten his middle name.)
In my mid-twenties my boyfriend and I moved in together. Became inseparable.
Dove into each other’s worlds without coming up for air.
Nothing was off limits.
Not topics, not hours, not intimacy or body parts.
His ex-girlfriend became our closest friend, my constant companion
— I miss her & that time in my life, more than anyone can imagine;
care free & surrounded by salt and sun and conversations and simplicity and new, so much new.
One night we were lying in bed, all three in a row
with me in the middle, his hand reached over to touch me, to touch her.
He came in close and I froze. I jumped up.
I panged jealous and waxed green with envy; forgot the romantic.
Was it because of me? Because of her? Would this all be ruined? Would I be forgotten?
At 40-years-old I can rightfully say that there are times in your life where you should let your guard down,
just be in the moment,
and times when you should hold it up with such force that not even a spec of dust could break through.
I can never know for sure what the outcome would have been, or what my future holds, but
— I can honestly say, no holds barred, I wish I would have let him.
At 38 I came down with bronchitis.
Maybe not more sick than I have been in my life, but more sick than I had been in years.
My husband had flown out of town for business and I was alone. And terrified.
A single phone call and a 5-hour drive later, my sister was at my house.
She nursed me back to health and calmed me down when I said my chest felt too ragged;
when I said I could sense my pulse behind my eyes and in my shoulders and ankles;
when I felt so weak I had to stop mid-step, mid-sentence, to catch my breath.
My fever broke 3-days after she showed up
and I woke to a quiet house, came into the kitchen and looked down at the loaded dishwasher.
Each fork and spoon was in its place, grouped together.
Each bowl was carefully tilted to ease the run-off.
It was perfect.
Done with love. Done with the most elaborate care I had ever seen.
I can’t say I have ever done it the same justice.
But to this day, very time I load it, I think of how much love she poured out in such a simple act,
and try my best to emulate it in all of mine.
It catches me sometimes, the memory,
so when I make you lunch I slow down what I am doing .
I stop and remember to do it with love.
With the most tender care. With a devotion that isn’t tangible, but catches in the glimpses,
like sunlight hitting glass.
And then there are the forgotten things that jump scare for no reason.
The ones that come with smell and taste and sound
but no purpose,
no lesson:
— A baby deer at a mostly frozen creek the first time I saw snow.
— My best friend Heather in 7th grade, eating glass and cutting her tongue. Blood in her drool and how a decade later she messaged me asking if I wanted to do ecstasy. I told her I was past that, had a daughter a family a life, and she just laughed —told me I could call her anytime.
— How I sat in the Barnes & Noble Parking lot on 1-92 arguing with cops over a domestic dispute. How I screamed for safety and how the cops just laughed. How it wasn’t a memory of mine, but of my best friend’s. Something she held onto when she wanted to remember how to have confidence. How I don’t even remember it, and how could I not remember how bad everything got back then.
— How my parent’s best friend was a pedophile, and how I can’t recall a time where I didn’t know how to make my insides feel good by touching my outsides.
My mother always told me that anything that was not God was evil
—as a mother does.
That black cats were just cats and people were terrible.
That soup was just soup; not a healing elixir made of bones and herbs and good intentions and love.
That demons and darkness and the devil seeped in through the cracks
— seeped in because you let it —
through tiny spaces under doors,
through lust or gluttony or deceit,
through not being thankful.
Seeped in through skipping a single night’s prayers.
That to say you’re sorry means you repent, that you never forget what you did;
That to say you’re sorry without changing your ways means you never were.
There was no space for forgetting in her household.
We store all the lives we once lived in the life we have now
in these lists we call poetry
that go on and on till I am writing Parts 1, 2, 3, and 42.
And I am thankful for all the seeping that has happened.
for all the remembering I have done,
about all the things I have forgotten
that have carried me to the place I am now.
ps. & I hope this helped you breathe a little easier….