Forget-Me-Not

For I know how I've made you despise me and don't wish to burden you with my presence anymore. But please, remember me. I'll never forget you.

If I could strip my mind of you,

peel away every whisper, every echo of your name,

would the ache in my chest finally quiet?

They say blessed is the mind that forgets,

but forgetting you would be like erasing the stars from the sky—

the night would still stretch on, but it would never be the same.

Would you mourn me then?

Or would you, too, erase me—

our laughter, our stolen glances,

the ghosts of us haunting the spaces we once filled?

Perhaps we would meet again,

two strangers in the dim glow of a dying evening,

passing by as the world moves around us, oblivious.

The wind would sigh between us, carrying something we don’t remember,

and for a fleeting moment, as our eyes met—

a flicker, a phantom, a whisper of recognition—

then nothing.

Just two figures fading into the dusk.

Yet somewhere, in the quiet corners of your heart,

perhaps you would still feel it.

A strange emptiness when it rains,

a pang in your chest watching people in pairs,

a restless ache for something—someone—

you do not know, yet miss like a lost limb.

Perhaps on lonely nights,

when the wind murmurs secrets through the trees,

you would whisper into the silence,

"I miss you."

Not knowing who, only that the absence is unbearable.

Or when a song about love deeply touches you,

And you wouldn't know who you are thinking of.

And perhaps we would still meet,

sitting alone on a park bench, as the city hums around us—

people lost in their distractions, their fleeting worlds,

but we, silent and still, as if waiting for something

we do not know we have lost.

Perhaps I would still clutch my worn pink teddy

without knowing why it feels like home.

Perhaps you would still wear that bracelet

—the one with faded letters spelling I love you—

never questioning why it feels wrong to take it off.

Our minds may be darkened,

but our souls would still know where they belong.

Would we remember, then,

the first time we met?

When we were children, and you hit me by accident,

your big smile as you said sorry?

Or that day in school when you took my hand

and asked me to dance,

my tiny fingers trembling, you looking deeply in my eyes as if we both share a secret,

a moment so simple yet burned into time.

Two children, unaware of what they would become—

yet, even then, we remembered each other when we were strangers.

Even then, we found each other years later.

When we are young, we hurt the ones we love.

We walk away, we say things we don’t mean,

we get hurt, we grow stubborn, we let pride swallow us whole.

But the soul does not forget.

It remembers every scar, every apology left unspoken.

We are shaped by our pain, molded by the ones we lose.

And even if our memories are stripped away,

even if we forget why we love,

we are still who we are because of them.

And maybe, in the world of forgotten things,

where the past collapses into dust,

the memory-us would fight to stay together.

We would not walk away this time.

We would know the value of losing,

know the weight of empty arms and shattered time.

And whisper to each other why should we fight when we can live for this moment?

Even as the memory-world around us crumbles,

as the echoes of us are swallowed into darkness,

we would run, we would scream, we would hold on,

because even if nothing else remains,

this was real.

Before the dark takes me, before time swallows us whole,

I would leave you something—

a single forget-me-not, placed on your doorstep,

its blue petals trembling in the wind, a silent plea:

Even if the world unravels, even if we become no one to each other,

do not forget me.

And perhaps, when you pass that flower,

something deep within you will stir,

a longing with no name, an ache with no memory—

and you will carry it with you, pressed between the pages of a book,

or tucked inside a pocket,

never knowing why, only that it feels like keeping a promise

to someone you have never met—

or perhaps, someone you have loved for lifetimes.

And though my mind will empty of you,

my soul will still remember.

© 2025 Inaba Tarek