The heart remembers everything it loved and gave away,
everything it lost and found again, and everyone
it loved, the heart cannot forget.
—Joyce Sutphen
Is it true the heart remembers
everything it loved and gave away?
Just today I recalled
that sweet Mormon boy
who I fell in love with
at a speech tournament,
perhaps in the final round when
he beat me. What was his name?
I recall how we ate
at a greasy spoon in Denver
late, late at night
but did we eat pancakes?
Or cupcakes? Or eggs?
He didn’t kiss me, did he?
Though I wanted him to.
He was slender
and had dark hair and such
sincere eyes, and I loved
to laugh at his clean, clean jokes.
You could argue he was found again
in the heart’s archives
after passing a late night restaurant
that reminded me of the one we liked,
but he is more forgotten to me
now than remembered.
What color were his eyes?
What country was he leaving for?
What was it he did
that made my heart thrill?
It is, perhaps, like
how my husband and I
now take our children
with us on trips to foreign lands.
I remember my husband’s mother saying,
You know he won’t remember Argentina,
speaking of my three-year-old boy.
And I thought, that is not the point.
The point is he learns early what it is
to be a citizen of the world.
And so it is he has grown to love
travel and people and learning new things
and seeing new landscapes and
saying thank you in other tongues.
And he does not remember
a thing about Argentina.
And so it is, perhaps, that
all of those lovers I don’t remember,
and the ones who I vaguely, sweetly do,
they were in their way
all preparing me to be a better
love to you. Although I have forgotten
names and conversations,
inside jokes and back alley kisses,
the heart perhaps remembers
how it opened then. It was practicing
the best it could to love you, now,
though the love we have is nothing
like what I thought love would be.
How simple it was before, a side
of maple syrup, a station wagon
with a full tank of gas
and a whole night that lasted
partway to forever.
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