Limbic (Poem)

some things, random, so sharp:
listening to a science podcast on the long-ago-lost iPod, while cleaning a bathroom.
the sweet-acid taste of strawberry yoghurt while reading In Cold Blood, huddled by a gas fire.
the feel of your vertebrae grinding as the horse underneath reaches stride on the cold grey beach.
the scent of apple-blossom and rot by the Perfume River as the sun goes to sleep.
the pressing letdown of milk at the sound of your baby's cry.

the sickening press of a needle into the spine.

some things, that should mean more, blurred, or absent altogether:
the day your youngest brother was born.
the day the elder one died, and his funeral service; that, too.
the entire middle of your wedding day, everything from the recessional to the toasts at the zoo
(monkeys shrieking from their perches behind you).

and you start to realise that when your great-grandmother said, when you were eight:
I have forgotten more than everything you know:
she wasn't lying, shrouded in her spiky, musty, crab-handed twilight.

some things, confused.
did it happen - or, perhaps a better question, did it happen to you,
or was it just a story you heard on a bus one time
or a catching novella read on a plane and half-assimilated:
a daytime film watched through fever-lidded eyes after surgery
a dream or half-dream, swallowed whole into the fabric of your own life

what is lost is so much greater than what is retained
of all unreliable things, this the worst:

who you are may not be who you are

- Kathy, 30/08/16