i am starting to forget things.
last night i washed my face
with hand sanitiser that
was sitting on the bathroom shelf.
i lost my debit card
and can’t seem to place it.
things are starting to slip from my brain.
if i could fill up the air with reminders
my lungs would breathe alarms.
i am juggling between
wanting to romanticise my grief
and wanting to run away to a distant city.
i want to marry a ringmaster
so he can teach me
how to tame animals;
the ones running in the street
and the ones running in my blood.
i am starting to forget things,
and it has something to do with genetics i heard,
so i am thinking my dead father
would’ve been alive today
if he remembered to stay.
i am starting to forget things
but i remember this dream from last night
where an aged man raped me.
and i am wondering if i should
get married to a woman’s honour,
so my dreams can also learn
to be non-existent.
or i can marry a therapist.
so he can teach my
body to stop mourning
my death. i am still alive.
i am starting to forget things
and i am still not sure what to call it–
freedom or slavery?
in acts of desperation
i tried to shove myself in the lives of a few,
but i am starting to forget things
and i can’t remember what they smelled like.
i think i can manage to poorly scribble their names,
but it’s getting difficult to recall their faces.
i couldn’t sleep last night,
so i decided to write a poem,
it was something about being forgetful,
and it had something to do with me.
Saheen Rahman is a writer and a communication student currently pursuing her postgraduate degree. She finds beauty in monotony and in run-of-the-mill things. She wants her work to be a voice of rebellion, a sword for change, a lifeboat to save someone else from drowning. She strongly believes that art is in everything, big and small, and that we only need the unavoidable and insatiable hunger to find it.
Featured image: Pixabay