Every day there’s something old
to feel sorry about—
what I should have done and didn’t,
or what I did, and kept on doing.
I want to believe
everyone’s forgotten by now.
Then I picture them thinking back.
And those who’ve died
and earned the wisdom death allows
just shake their heads and sigh.
“Very funny,” my father would say
after my sister and I played
some cruel little joke on him.
“Ha, ha,” he’d add,
to let us know he got the point.
We want to forget
until we start to forget.
We want the past to change,
and we want it back.
“Enough is enough,”
my father used to say
to tell us it was over.
~ from The History of Forgetting (Penguin Books, 2009)
