My favorite Poem

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —

Success in Circuit lies

Too bright for our infirm Delight

The Truth’s superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased

With explanation kind

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind —

 

-Emily Dickinson, 1263

I was giving the ASH VS EVIL DEAD series a shot late last night, and there’s a scene where this gal asks Ash if he knows any poems because it “drives her wild” (what?) so, campy-boy Ashypoo says a thing-

-which I don’t remember remember because my brain went into remember mode. I started priming something like “I guess my answer would be ‘I don’t know if it’ll drive you wild but this’s my favorite…’ ”

…..But I couldn’t remember. It was so, goddang, annoying. 

I had this framework for the structure of what I remembered as my favorite poem: I knew its rhythm, roughly how it looked blurred on a page, and I knew that if I reread it, it’d register as incredibly familiar. That all told me that somewhere, its connections connected somewhere in my brain.

But I couldn’t recall it or who wrote it, and that drove me nuts. After a bit, I started googling all the ways I might’ve read it, but didn’t know search words, had dicked out on its author, and was much less was recalling its year.

That frustration made me go, “well…don’t try to remember”
Other me *during deadite decapitation*  “But you memorized it in like, one read before — what was it though?”

A bit more “ahhh……forget it.”
Other me:  *repeats*

For two hours.  Until I was like “TELL THE TRUTH BUT TELL IT….” …nice?

An hour more: “OHYEAHTELLALLTHETRUTHBUTTELLITSLANTSUCCESSINCIRCU-”

And there it was.

Yeeeeeeeeeaaah.

So enjoy that cool-ass poem.

Honestly, I could see the greatest horror of someone losing their memory being the ability to remember what they’re losing.