[October 1]

This is how to forget
that you are probably being forgotten:
make your coffee strong, with dark brown sugar.
Go to bed at nine. Wake up at six
and sit outside in the lightening blue
looking at your phone. Look at your phone
often. Pretend that you’re not
looking for texts. Become good at pretending.
Become a good writer. Wish you were a better
writer. Don’t cry. Dig your nails into
your arm and forget you put them there until
the skin turns white around the grooves
and puffs up and stings in the shower.
Take lots of showers. Put a counter
on your phone: thirty-four days, thirty-five,
thirty-six. You knew this
would happen. One day, two thousand
two hundred and twenty-six days from now,
someone will say her name and you’ll say Who?
even though your heart will skip a beat anyway,
as it does from time to time.
Fall into the tachycardia. Cross your arms
lightly over your chest at night and pretend
that you don’t feel like you’re shrinking
into the bed. Run forty minutes in the morning
and forty minutes at night, washing the memory
of her away with every drop of sweat. Walk home
in the rain. Forget that once, before
she pushed you away, she pulled you closer. Already,
every skin cell that she ever touched is gone.