Some people's memory

[Bar22do]

Some people's memory

Some people’s memory goes
snowflakes
some others’ it goes
blank

Some memories –
on the rings of life -
are wonder drugs
like were, long ago,
Mom’s lips on bruised elbows.

Wars’ acids
etch memories
of bonds lost -
Death’s irking gift
for those not fallen,
and so unbearable that

some people’s memory
goes blank
or snowflakes.

[PrinceMyshkin]

I don't know how I happened to overlook this when it was first posted, but


Some people's memory

Some people’s memory goes
snowflakes
some others’ it goes
blank

Some memories –
on the rings of life -
are wonder drugs
like were, long ago,
Mom’s lips on bruised elbows.

Wars’ acids
etch memories
of bonds lost -
Death’s irking gift
for those not fallen,
and so unbearable that

some people’s memory
goes blank
or snowflakes.



I recognize in it the voice that has grown somewhat familiar to me since then: a voice that is modest but strong, free of egoistic flourish and incisive. The effect of all this comes across powerfully in those seemingly simple final three lines.

[hack]

This puts me in a place where hot brass flies and the sound is so loud that there is complete silence in the slow motion stop frame strobing unreal time snowflake filled vision of death and hell on earth. I want to cry, but I will not.