Over the years some of my favorite songs were tainted with turmoil and trauma.
They had played in the background of moments I didn't want to remember and reminded me of all the reasons to grieve those who I’ll never replace. The lyrics burnt like lye against my skin and I could no longer listen to them, so I would swiftly hit skip.
But lately the same verses that once stung have become a soundtrack to my redemption.
I’ve found myself pressing play again to allow the music to be music instead of memorials.
Perhaps these songs were never meant to preserve my pain.
Maybe they were always meant to teach me that salvation can arrive wearing the same melody that once broke my heart.
Tag: Memories
The Year of the Dog
There is a year that has never left me.
It has successfully stitched sickening moments into my skin and branded silent screams into my soul.
Some nights I imagine that those memories could be burnt away. As if my pain could curl up and combust like paper that has been lit on fire.
As if I could strike a match against the faint patchwork of scars stretching across my thigh and flick a sulfuric flame onto everything odious that happened that year.
I always hope that it burns fast.
And I always pray that it ignites your name first.
Front Door
Your childhood home has new owners,
but the front door is still the same.
I wonder if they like the way the lock sounds
as it clicks into place like you did.
Or if they've become curious about why the left bottom panel's paint is peeled in such a peculiar place.
Maybe they'll replace it this summer
when the weather is nicer.
Or maybe I should compliment them on
their door so they don't.
Dublin and Sword’s Castle
Childhood
It's funny what insignificant details stick out from my childhood.
I can remember the neighbor kid's laugh,
the entirety of a book minus the title, and the foul flavor of the Flintstones vitamins that were force fed to me.
Yet the details I want to remember have been lost throughout the years.
I can no longer recall the exact model of my parent's gray car, when I lost my slightly yellow front tooth, or the address of the blue house that I spent my first years in.
It seems that I have lost those details.
It seems that I have forgotten everything except what I had expected to forget.
Home
You didn't give me shelter.
You gave me a cage.
You gave me whitewashed walls and
called it a home as I walked warily
on eggshells.
Yet I learned to crave the quiet.
I preferred to live in silence versus
hearing one of them crack.
The sound of them shattering
was somehow as loud as your palm
against my face.
Found
There are thousands of variations to each situation I've placed myself within.
Each moment I've experienced could have been changed and every encounter slightly altered. Yet, I do believe that each and every outcome would have inevitably led me to you.
Somehow I still would have found you.
Imprinted
My earliest memory in life means nothing.
It involves a woman I don't talk to anymore,
a place I've never gone to again,
and a food that I've never really liked.
Yet, there it has stayed.
Imprinted into my brain with a pointless and uninspiring permanence.
Smelling like stagnant lake water and
tasting like warm Kraft singles.
Picture
One of the best pictures I've ever taken is one I struggle to look at.
At one point I even framed it, but I had to take it down.
It was more than just an image.
It was a melancholy memory that I mistakingly forced between wood and glass.
It was a moment in time that should always remain just that. Nothing more, nothing less.
Unreliable
I'm an unreliable narrator.
My stories are missing timelines and their details have been diluted by either drugs or depression.
Although that's probably for the best.
Why repeat what I'm urged to remember,
but compelled to forget?
AO Poetry 
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