Abridged 0 – 43: Lethe

I had my piece 'I forgot her,' published in Abridged 0 - 43: Lethe edition, it accompanied the poem, The Myra Road Remembrances by Damien Smyth. Below is the statement for the open call.

We are what we remember. And what we want to forget. We no longer feel comfortable with our own memories even though we say we have no regrets. We see people as reinforcement and justification. The end justifies the means and the present is all that matters. There is always a need to celebrate and memorialize. The selfie is perhaps the endgame of this: ‘See I’m still here.’ We arbitrarily signpost the past as if 10 years is any more relevant than 9, or 99 less significant than 100. It’s capturing the past, cutting off the rough edges and ribboning it: selling it to others and ourselves. Society rounds us up in a collective memory for easy measurement and we cling to tradition like a rock as if it wasn’t something we define by the present. Each world we build we surround by a Lethe, a border-river keeping out the things we’d rather forget we’d done. Scorch the earth and flood the plains. Image Jennifer Garza-Cuen.