on looking over

i remember when/how you {could open nearly everything i write}. today i prefer to begin with “i am hopeful that”, “today it seems”, “the challenge of”, “i love when you/it/they”, or “when i see you next”. i fancy myself someone who prefers a challenge over the comfort of what has past.
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alas, i remember when you put a penny near the stylus of the record player to offset an uneven end-table. when you made chili with oranges to brighten the vegetable flavors, and how it did. you sat with me and cried after telling me that i “only see the world as wrong and broken”. when you made a baclava for six of the longest hours. i remember Greece, and the “maybe” of Canada. i remember a sense of longing to be more when you didn’t wash you clothes for years.  i remember loving you the way it feels to finally vomit and take my life back from fear. i remember when we kissed in front of your girlfriend, who later never mentioned it. i remember the political spectrum became a circle and we only wanted to know where the wick of the thing was kept. i remember loads of cussing and dirt and how much we needed all of it then.  i remember you having sex with partners of friends while i had sex with your X. drinking as we drove to the desert . we smoked weed and went to the halloween party with far too many people. i remember how you drove with two tires in the inside ditch. i remember what they thought when we all slept on the floor together. i remember driving 3 hours one way to see you. the day before you moved away they called us communists for reasons they couldn’t understand. i remember the conversations about ant and insect philosophies as they disappeared into the concrete. i remember the lasagna/Elvis Costello/smell the day i moved in with you and your partner, down south. i remember how big it felt to love you because i love you something like that right now.
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maybe remembering is as much of a keystone as it is a crutch. maybe it just feels good today.