The Charity of Forgetting

I watched you set fire to everything I had left- the already charred remnants you had been trying to leave behind since you discovered the charity of forgetting. “You can leave anything in the past, if you can hate yourself enough to burn from the inside out. You can become clean. New.” I’ve been trying to rise from the ashes for as long as I can remember. But, I’m rootless under the glowing pyre that I can still see reflected back at me every time I look in the mirror. Your honey brown eyes pouring venomous tears onto my cheeks as you tell me that you love me. But... You just can’t take it anymore. Cinders burn my shoulders as I try to heave what should have become rotten, so long ago into my stubborn and conflicted chasm of what I’m naive enough to label “Hope”. I know you’re never coming back. To be honest. I don’t want you to. I just want that feeling again. That velvet, unconditional warmth. So unlike this searing heat that you ignited when you tore away the only thing that made me feel- real. As the smoke begins to gather in my temple, I can smell the cost of hating love. And the inevitability of becoming a shadow behind a crumbling haven that I thought I would always call, home. And so I let go of the embrace. The fear of being buried by goodbye. It will always burn. The immense weight of memory. The inability to forget. And the relentless need to use our passion as an accelerant for my own purpose. -James Kelley 2018