Memory At Near Zero

Tentatively taste a once sweet word,
a slipped memory out of your past

Love is one example. But you are hesitant
like deciding to scratch your poison oak

when you know you shouldn’t but do
anyway. Or push your tongue against

an aching tooth to make sure it hurts
enough to need remedy. So loss is another

kind of need I’m thinking. As in a tooth
even a root canal can’t save. Reason

recommends extraction to relieve the pain. Or
prevent more dire complications. But by now

the soft tissues of your racing heart have
become too inflamed with invasive memory

from arcane regions of the brain. Those parts
holding onto tenderness, or mostly regret.

The sensitivity rife with remembering. Drifting
there become disease. Lost stillness swelling

to anesthesia you must reach, if you can. Lack
of sensation into lesser pulse-beats again.

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Ed Higgins’ poems and short fiction have appeared in Duck & Herring Co.’s Pocket Field Guide, Monkeybicycle, Pindeldyboz, and Bellowing Ark, as well as the online journals Lily, Cross Connect, Word Riot, The Centrifugal Eye, Mannequin Envy, and Red River Review, among others. He and his wife live on a small farm in Yamhill, OR with a menagerie of animals including a Manx barn cat named Velcro. He teaches writing and literature at George Fox University, south of Portland, OR., USA.