Raising Welts

I still have to remind myself...  

Songs play on random...  

Moments in time marked by notes...  

Raising welts in memory...  

Emotions partially left behind,  

They never fully vacate the premises...  

Regret, I try not to participate in that...  

Things happen...  

Experiences get catalogued for future use...  

A box of a/v and pc peripheral connectors and cables collected in a box for years...  

You never know when a lesson will become useful again...  

Dozens of journals on a bookshelf...  

Documentation of ephemera and random occurrences since memory isn't always accurate...  

Chronology isn't always the way it dances...  

I remember every touch,  

But they tend to glow together...  

Mix and match...  

Garanimals is a childhood memory before Toughskins Husky jeans...  

Some of the musical artists from back then have since changed their names...  

Many have aged out of this world...  

Morning Has Broken...  

Ride on the Peace Train...  

More recent moments from the last decade are colored by corporate music...  

Things were out of sync...  

Overprocessed...  

I couldn't master autotune so a few relationships went all off-key and sour...  

The sex was always good, then the little blue pills made it amazing...  

They never did help with shared emotional dysfunction overlapping though...  

What we individually brought with us,  

And what arose from our admixture...  

People sometimes run together...  

Ink hitting a wet spot and accelerating through the fibers of the pulp...  

Bloom...  

Sometimes I have to remind myself  

That I'm not like her...  

The reason for the split...  

There's a tendency to be engulfed by another personality...  

Enmeshed...  

"I think I'm like you because I think I need you..."  

But it's more  

"I think I have to be 'not me'  

For you to stay..."  

We mimic those we desire without even thinking about it...  

We play the part because the lead got lost on the way to the show...  

Unless you're high school sweethearts,  

You're both just understudies...  

Time clicks by with a steady frame rate...  

Perception, however, does not...  

Perception of time is based on re-created memories...  

The smell of old Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys hardcovers from the used book store...  

Wandering the isles...  

Snapping turtles at the frog pond...  

Duck weed and bullfrogs...  

Subconsciously avoiding things about who I was that offer clues as to who I am...  

I only have suspicions...  

We never make it easy...  

Reinventing ourselves with every new trauma,  

With every new victory,  

Every time the Viewmaster's lever clicks...  

Different windows on the same paper disc...  

Songs play on random...  

They remind me of my ex-wives before and after things went out of tune...  

I know there is judgement...  

The music reminds me,  

Subtle moments...  

And the not so subtle...  

I even go back to high-school,   

Spinning around and around on a wet road just to see what it's like to lock the brakes...  

It must have scared her to death...