L

It's really something.
My memory is fading and with it goes who I was
when I was confident and well read
when I knew the names of key philosophers
and kept up in conversations that made reference to them.

Maybe I was never as smart as I imagine myself to have been.
Maybe I never really did feel more intensely than I do now.

I like to imagine that I once had a great love
and that all others will pale in comparison.
It makes the warmth I feel for my partner seem
like a more acceptable feeling from which to build a life.

My hindsight is generous, perhaps,
but my forgetfulness is a blessing when coupled with my sense of hope.
It makes me think I have something inside me
that I can return to, something great I can be again.

At my worst, though, it makes me
cocky. And mean. And desperate.

"I'm sure she was a very smart fourteen-year-old,"
is what they'll say about me.