“Daydream tendencies had you smiling soft and sweet. Keep those blurry memories somewhere safe …
Realize it's never coming back.”
“Lefty,” Title Fight
The first memory you can recall is of hands—
dark skinned and rough, calloused, not from hard work, but rough nights. Fingers heavy with jewelry and machismo; some borrowed, some stolen and some earned. The arm attached sports a suede tan jacket worn to comfort, the folds of its leather leaving behind a trace of tobacco and cologne with each acrid gesture, as if every move triggered a spritz in the air. The arm is comforting in the way that memories usually are, vague but familiar and lived in— survived.
And though the arm had gone, the smell lingered, so strong it slept dormant in your nostrils; a familiar scorch of heartache whenever someone was nearby with a camel and a light. And every boy you kissed with the smell of cigarettes on his lips made the smell erupt— a cataclysm of anxiety—molten dejá vu. You become aware that pretty French expressions romanticize nostalgia, but you work so that the smell makes you sick to your stomach. I hate cigarettes, you say on cue. And the idea of pining for an arm and a smell and the sense of comfort from living in the past really does make you sick. So, you cough, and you wretch and you hack the sentiment from your mind.
But your first memory is of hands, dark and heavy; an arm, wearing a suede tan jacket that smells of tobacco.
Your first memory is of a detached limb; that could belong to your father, your uncle, your neighbor, a complete stranger—a limb that you have gone your whole life trying to love, to give a face to, to complete a body.
And you always seem to forget, that the other hand in that vague shadow of memory,
was your own.
Doris Rubio is a Latina punk living in San Diego. She likes rollerblading, reading and eating her arepas con crema and pepper. Her poem, “Questions for Henry Rollins’ Unibrow,” was published in Freezeray Poetry, issue#17, 2019.