memories do not make very good pillows

they are always getting stuck inside my ears
and i can still hear the sound of my mistakes
long after they are only an echo

words resonate like stories ready
to detonate, bringing me back to
days when our hearts were phoenixes

- when our strength could be reborn from the ashes,
days when life was not a concussion of complexities

- when our dreams were not chased away by carbon catastrophes
like every day molecules of oxygen, and hope still lived
in the pits of our stomachs, nestled between butterflies
and crème brûlée
- when the threads of promise had been whispered over and
over again and again, so many times that they were stronger than steel,
days when our confidence was more self-evident than constitutional “truths”