Raymond Carver opening; my stuff on the lawn, but no dancing. No Will Ferrel movie version. Other shoes where my shoes went, other moments where mine, ours, used to be. Our house, our bed, our Oregon, our story-- something different now. Just a prologue, apparently, but now separate. Other shapes and shadows occupy the space where mine had stood, sat, slept, ate, laughed and loved. And was loved. Deconstructing through rearranging, replacing through building over the old, is something I don't have the ability to do. I really don't. I'm terrible at it. I don't find and replace, erase, or try to forget. I had thought that was the worst thing ever, to distort those memories, or worse, lose them. Worse than just being somebody on a list, worse than being a poem
in a collection of poems, including ones--I'm sure--about those who helped take something special from me. So I don't make overt steps to cover up those memories and moments by creating new ones right directly over the old. Or pretend they weren't there. But lying is a form of pretending and maybe I need to get better at lying to myself. At pretending. Then I could tell myself, I could pretend, that one day I could replace, forget, not-think-about. That would be easier, make it simpler to go about the world. Like, I could drink a sloe gin fizz, in Portland, Oregon, with someone else, create something new that would replace the old. Like someone else's slippers. Maybe that's all takes. I suppose that would make things easier. For some, it's all about what's easy, or what's easiest. And why should I be any different? At the very least, it would make it easier to order a sloe gin fizz.
