Most days I am a museum of things I want to forget
– E. E. Scott
[Part 1]
Museum: a depository of grief displayed aesthetically;
I carry the mishaps of things I want to forget
like the fragments of a brittle artifact—
i. the days I wish I never lived
ii. the partition of my father and mother
iii. the fear of my mother growing old
iv. the pain that came with the loss of my grandmother
[Interlude]
Consider this
poem
a museum
of self-portraits:
of a young adult forgotten
to the retention of survival
of a poet scared of the
greater grief his poem will become
of a boy who dreams of
the future after dying
of aborted dreams
& miscarriages
& a receding hairline
[Part 2]
Aesthetic: the joy that refuses to come in the morning
—I’ve always searched for it in bird songs
the unseen light at the end of the tunnel
—hope is an illusion is a phantasm
the better bad days that are still ahead
the substance of things hoped for
the evidence of things not seen
