poetry fix: on string bikinis, hotel california & the fear of being forgotten
I’m afraid it’s true . . . fears {whether low-level heartbeat accelerators or full-on phobias} are clever hobgoblins that can haunt us, taunt us, paralyze us and wreak MAD havoc in our lives. They pour through our subconscious and pounce.
I recently went on a phobia binge and devoured lists of them . . . everything from arachibutyrophobia {fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth} to Zemmiphobia-{fear of the great mole rat}. I know, I know – now you’re curious, right? Here’s a link to a plethora of phobias.
And then one phobia leapt out at me – athazagoraphobia, the fear of being forgotten. The word banged around in my head for days, and then morphed into this poem.
athazagoraphobia {the fear of being forgotten}
truth
be told
I’m over it.
done
trying
to tie cherry stems with my tongue
wondering
if there’s really a hanged man on the cover of Hotel California
waiting
for the mattress police to appear when I tear off the tag
worrying
that someday this will all be forgotten.
Maybe I’ve been studying the wrong playbook all along?
Or did my intense focus distract me
from the most important signal of all
so I charged forward without realizing
there was nothing transparent
about how we moved on the field.
I shift into preservation mode
quicker than you can say
athazagoraphobia
determined
to reinvent the here and now
spin and twist what was
into what I need it to be.
I’ve always been a summer girl, after all.
Maybe if truth was
more string bikini than scratchy wool sweater,
I might be more inclined
to try it on for size –
parade in front of mirrors
sashay into family barbecues
maybe even strut by him
unrecognized
the jolt of my
sheer vulnerability making him respond
with fevered curiosity.
His reflexes aren’t completely rusty.
An Ivory Girl needs to feel understood?
Oh, he has a membership card for that.
He’ll even make time to show her Atlantic City
just so she can Tweet she’s been there.
If I stop moving
he’ll consider getting closer, and I’ll wonder
if his skin still smells the way I it did
when I’d wake in night’s quietest folds
just to breathe him in.
He’ll struggle to remember
places I like his lips to land —
inside of wrists? eyelids?
And then athazagoraphobia
that word inside my head
will start to dissolve,
the way fears do when they know that they’ve been beat.
There are things far worse than being forgotten.