Carson Wolfe
I will not forget
the day you held me by the hand
and said, I take you as my wifeband
and the registrar cried,
you cannot queer language here.
I must not forget
every love-note ever sent.
I am hellbent
on archiving us in a library labelled home.
I’ll eat fish oil as a vegan
and pray to Mnemosyne
that you do not leave me.
For I am a museum
of careless mistakes.
Inattentive. Head like a sieve.
I’m sorry I cannot grasp
the first time we ever made love,
only the vagueness of how I shook
like a polaroid
between your fingers.
My thoughts are a pit of quicksand.
This poem, an armband,
stitched to a raft of forget me nots
and to-do lists that I cling to.
I can recite the name of any actor
and every film they have ever been in,
but I scheduled a lecture
on our wedding day.
Let’s make your birthday every month of the year
and sink my fear of forgetting.
I cannot stop writing in rhyme,
I only remember in rhythm.
This is why I married you, a dancer.
Each movement a snapshot. A fragment. A twerk.
This is how we work.
I imagine us growing old
and sitting like two strangers
on our infinite first date.
I will have lost all my marbles
and you, down to the last few,
and you shall move,
if only to lift a cup of tea to your lips,
and I will remember.
I will remember.
During lockdown, I changed my Instagram bio to “poet” and adopted a cat so I can live like a real writer. My work has since appeared in an anthology by Hidden Voices, Brag Magazine, and Stone of Madness Press, amongst others. I Instagram from Manchester, U.K @vincentvanbutch.