Like honey

Believe yourself when I tell you

It's slow like honey

Your memory will fix itself into something liberal

All that sugar isn't natural, but it tastes like I always remembered it 

Oatmeal and berries with a swirl of peanut butter that tastes like dessert for breakfast

Once, when I was a child, I ate a worm baked in summer sun

It tasted like shit

But I don't remember the taste of it

I remember the movements 

The sun hitting my skin, my hands warm, preparing themselves to peel thin

My fingers like parchment paper and my throat like a desert 

I remember the work of bringing a gulp down and my eyes gingerly closing

But the taste isn't part of it either

And that's the only thing that I remember when I think about it

All the things that I don’t remember

I did it to impress you, an act of courage or maybe servitude

I talked to you once in class, and you didn't remember until I mentioned it

A thousand years later, when we first kissed

You moved your hair like we were underwater

You guided my fingertips to your shoulders under streetlights 

The skin on your cheek reflected the night like freckles made of stardust

And it tasted like coffee, and it still does 

It's slow like honey

I asked if you remembered it one day

Of course you did, but I wonder if in your memory of it, the snow falls and melts on our faces

The sun sets west out the window between the leaves, and I watch it above the book I'm reading

As a child, I didn't know what I hated so much about this

It might’ve been the assignment, maybe the choice I didn't have in it, I would get distracted so easily, I remember counting the letters instead

I think it was watching you read every morning that made me try it again

It was Lord of the Flies on a plane. I finished it the day I came home.

A few years before my uncle had left and decided he wouldn't come back

I remember the rift as it was happening, but only from a few conversations surrounding

The part where he left and appeared as a ghost in family portraits

A head like a nest, and I'm told that he didn't stand a chance

I always remembered a man who would prove that he was one with a flared chest and huffing breaths

Bar brawls, television squabbles, as he played the war in his mind

He’d flush his cheeks with drinks at Christmas 

He’d cry to himself when he was alone 

When I was young, he took me to a park once

And he forgot me there later on

I swung far and long, into the clouds like an airplane, until the breeze could not withstand even me

In a summer of scraped knees and giggling bellies

He fought my dog

In the middle of the day, as the sun bathed the countertops and shadowed the chaos 

I stood like a shadow

Just before the gate and watched as the blood pooled from his wrist and forearm onto the tile

Collecting in the cracks of a home long sold by now, forever

I remember that he cared so much for us that he’d kill anyone who stood to take it

He has a daughter now

But we dont see her, my Cousin

He adored her like every decision he made was hers

She has his eyes, blue and white like sea caps that stretch and rise under mutable skies

He loved us, I think he still does

It's slow like honey

Every waking memory trickles down, and only parts make it to the mouth

I feel too old now to be worrying about how a memory evolves

The glint blinds me, so I look into the shade, hoping to find a reprieve in the bushes

The book closed, and I admired the white and yellow ring at my knees

My aunt killed herself with a shotgun in the spring 

She would post sunsets with no caption

Her artwork was pretty and colorful

It contained space cadets and long-haired women covered by branches and solar winds

Nobody cared to see it, and they all claimed a different reason

I didn’t know she made art until after her final proclamation

This was a different woman than the one I knew

Her hair spray would stick to my neck when she’d hug me

She’d tell jokes that didn’t insult me

That day she left, I smelled her famous perfume creeping in from an open window

And again, later that week, in a store where I think she would’ve filled her wardrobe

I stood tall and weak for a moment in the kitchen, watching as birds fluttered from the feeder

I hadn't seen her in some time, but I had heard a lot of stories about her

She could not help herself, and I only remember a carefully designed shell

So I’m told

She worked in the hospital

She had demons with voices that followed her

She accused the doctors

I don't know what she believed in, but whatever it was, I hope she's well treated

I don't pray, but I think about her all the same as if I did

She was always sweet to me, she talked to me like a person and not a child

We didn't hold a funeral for her, I would’ve made it if we did

For me, I dont want one either

Give me to science or throw me to the vultures

I hope she had the same sentiment 

She adored my brother

I tilt my drink back and forth so that the ice cubes clink like a boxing ring

An impressionist painting of curiosity

He didn't speak but did so eloquently

He was communicating, we just didn't hear him

His hair cowlicked like mine

My hair is long now, and its waves and curls become light in the summers

I remember those women who would come by for speech and therapy

They talked to you measuredly as I watched from the carpet 

You flew through the cognitive sessions like practice

I remember the expressions on all of their faces

We read books and slept in the same bed, watched movies, and I knew you understood everything

We walked the yard and played ball. I never underestimated you 

You were four when they found you unresponsive  

I looked, but I didn't want to

That night, you found me in a dream, the one I had been walking through since morning

You took my hand in yours, and we watched it unfold from the periphery,

From the safety of the treetops, listening to the clouds clash rather than the crowd

I felt everything from the breeze to the sun, my mother's arms around the boy on the couch watching cartoons, but I wasn't sad

You told me that everything was in its right place

I was told you were in purgatory, but I knew better than to believe what they said 

If there was a god, he would’ve had you at his hip 

We carried that stone of yours with Cars and John Deere all the way north

I still watch it closely when I’m home 

I sip my drink, looking over the water that reflects the deflecting red in the sun's disappearance

Slow like honey

I swallow and brace for the impact of everything

I don't know of all these remembrances what I'll all remember in the morning

I look behind me and see you resting your eyes on the sofa under arching orange skies

The love of my life

The first time I saw you sleeping, I cried 

Because I’d never seen such a beautiful thing 

You slipped off into your dreams like a thief of masculinity, quick and unapologetic

Under the TV light and arm on my right, you swallowed up my pride for me

I remember such things as dessert because the longer they bake, they burn 

It’s slow like honey

And if I remember well enough, they’ll taste like my pancakes with berries and peanut butter in a swirl

I watch as your eyes flicker under the comfort of nature on a television

I remember a fortune.

I remember everything.