we are most alive in dreams

     I’ve deleted all of those albums we would listen to together, driving through the twisting and turning back roads of Pennsylvania, or laying in your parents bedroom.

     I’ve lost your phone number.

     I’ve thrown away all of the pictures you left at my house. The ones we took in the fall, all of those years ago. The golden browns and oranges playing off of your pale skin and freckled nose.

     I’ve donated all of the clothes you left strewn about my bedroom floor. Blouses with torn and broken buttons. Pants with walked-off hems.

     I’ve burned all of the letters we sent. Those pages and pages of tangible love curling at the ends and turning into ash, something equally tangible to something so intangible in my soul and heart. That sentence doesn’t give justice to the snakes that live in my guts, that toss and turn when I think of you.

     I’ve never done something like this.

     So I wanted to write you one last time, to ask you what it was like to be forgotten. But all remaining pieces of you have vanished and I can’t remember your name. It started with a letter and ended in catastrophe.

     If someday soon you find this and remember what it was like to sweat, don’t remember me. If you find this and remember what it was like to bleed, don’t remember me. If someday you find me and want to remember what it was like to be a giant, don’t remember me.

     Because I’ve never done something like this and I hope to forget about it one day.