memento mori

as in remember you must die / plato once said that the sole purpose of philosophy is to practice for dying and death / i practice more often than i should / staging rehearsals in the space behind my eyes / i try to remember when my grandmother was young so often i think i’ve rebuilt a version of her from scratch / piece by piece / my very own ship of theseus / when my latin teacher taught us about him she said ‘remembering can be a moral act, sometimes’ / i am less moral than theseus and better at forgetting / my grandmother doesn’t remember my name / she remembers when to say amen / jesus hangs on the wall and does not look at me / sometimes i wish he would / sometimes i wish i could tear all my eyelashes out at once just to have a little hope / she looks at me and i wish she wouldn’t / her eyes are dark / black sails / i hold her hand to let her know someone alive is nearby / i wonder how the sea tasted to Aegeus when he fell / someone takes a picture with flash and for a split second i think it’s lightning / she looks very childlike in the brightness / the rehearsal finishes and the curtains fall / they’re sewn from scraps of white sails / i want to remember / this is me praying / god i want to remember