if/then

If you are questioned, remember to keep your cool, then realize you forgot to. Still, if this is a catechism, then I can’t provide you with an answer. How could I know the question? I’m no Daniel. 

If you’ve remembered a dream, then make sure the day sieves it away. If memory is sorrow, then so are dreams—they libel upon discovery. Be alert. The hour of remembrance lies in the penumbra of your childhood home, waiting for your mind to stumble in.

If the world can forget its sins, then I can outlive my past. I want to forgive it. I want to be the world. I want to blankout every recollection, my past folded into a crisp matte envelope oppressed by a rose-red seal, the color of a sparrow’s cry. If I can replace my past with proverb, then I would choose to be the fool, the prodigal son unreturned. 

If blindness marks a forefather’s sin, then I want to be an archetype. I want to be softer than evil, but harsher than the silence before the answer. I want to hear nothing. I want to return to folly. If the sparrow can sing after seeing itself, reflected a thousand times, I want to become the mirror, the light which cannot see itself. I am free of introspection in this dull shine. 

If hell is other people, then I wish to immolate. I want the indelible smell of sulfur, the element which makes moments last. Brimstone, too. Make it new, the tinder cries. Here, my minute hand of reflection shudders as metronome, staving off memory in this state of being. Let me burn. If I can forget my past, I will return unharmed.  

I want to walk into a cemetery at twilight and turn the lights on—again, only remembering what tithes I bestow to time. I want to be only one of many. If I can recall only the future, then life can be infinite, a straight line rather than ouroboros. 

I want to look through the sliding-glass door of childhood and see only my dwelling; if the lights are on, then no one’s home. Then it’s a tomb. Let the dead rest in peace. They will rest forever.