These are words I can never forget. They are stamped on my heart, they course through my blood. I cannot vomit them.

But I can say them to others, in the way they were sent to me. I can impress these words on others. I care about others.

What can we gather from this asking of our family and friends?
The answers they give are obvious.  The answers always start in your head–and its always in their voices.Therefore you can never really ask yourself questions of them without them answering before you’ve had a chance to ask them.

You’re going to be better at things than I ever was. I’m telling my nephew this. I really believe what I’m saying. I don’t think he does, He can’t even drive or work or vote or die for his country yet. It’s the worse for him, he thinks.
But I know better.

She used to love the rain. But now any droplets from the heavens above reminded her of Jose. Her Joe. Her great love. Her everything. Now all she had was rain.
Which felt like everything she missed about him. His clarity and gentleness and his wet and wild nature.

Tepid water greeted me from landing. It was a small pool before me but I was easily able to cover my feet, to feel the lap of luxury, to smell the fragrance of care and delicacy. This was my life.

A stub. That’s it. That is word I’d been hunting for all day. I was worried that if I had not found this word, it would have kept me up all night.
But now that I have found this word. I do not why I was looking it. Looking for meaning will be an all night affair.

Everything around you, they say, is just a reflection of your life. And life happens so quickly so that when you look back, as if looking from the backseat from a fast moving car, you see it unspooling behind you, life. It goes so damn fast.
I’m not asking life to stop. Or even to slow down. I’m just asking myself not to look back. But I can’t help it.
Yes, you can, my friend Joe says. Joe is an old man who can say anything he wants and he says memories are just Twinkies–those little soft killer-cakes that I never much cared for.
And that’s your problem, he says off my dislike of Twinkies. You never much cared for your life either he adds, with a wink.
A winkie, I call it.

Unless.
I cannot come up with something to hold back my love of these memories. But I have to figure out a way to hold them off, for just a moment, just long enough to get my bearings.
And I’m not very good-looking, inside or out. I have bald spots. My face is disproportional and I notice this works with some people–a lot of people, or movie stars.
So what does this have to do with memories killing me? I think I used to see myself as beautiful long ago. As a kid. But I wouldn’t have called myself that exactly. I would have called myself amazing or superhero-ish. I was a bad-ass.
And beautiful. Instead, as a kid, or as I was purported to be one, I felt like I could accept every nook and cranny of existence. There were no dark corners. I didn’t have to look in a mirror for any validation.
Where do you look now, when you pass a mirror, and need to floss, or wash your face? I never remember washing my face as a kid. That’s where the memories lurk, in that fucking mirror.

The candles flickered. I heard my name called, from the other side of those tiny flames. His eyes were lit. I answered by blowing out the candles.
A snake of smoke rose from the candle wicks and I knew I was in love.

Tulips dazzle next to daffodils. There’s a party in flower pots.
I can also smell pot in the air. There is a party everywhere.