The Fading

Originally posted at https://dsserv.net/poetry/thefading/.

One of my most favorite movies of all time is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I was watching this with my wife the other evening and felt inspired to write a little something. I am also crafting this into lyrics for a song as well.

Shadows of you linger,
Whispers of your name
Echo in the chambers of my mind.
I seek solace in forgetting,
A miracle machine to wash away the pain,
To cleanse the canvas of our past.

But as the hues of memory begin to pale,
I feel the essence of us
Slipping through my fingers like sand.
In erasing you, I'm erasing myself—
A paradox of healing,
A cure that kills the patient.

Where your smile once blazed,
Now lies a void,
An empty frame where our masterpiece hung.
Our story, once vivid and alive,
Fades to a watercolor blur,
Indistinct, colorless, faint.

In the absence of our shared history,
I've become a stranger to my own narrative,
A reader who's forgotten the preceding chapters.
These scars I so desperately sought to erase
Were the very lines that taught me
How to love, how to feel, how to be.

As my memory begins to unravel,
I grasp at loose threads,
Trying to hold onto the fabric of us.
For in forgetting you,
I'm losing the blueprint of myself,
Becoming a ghost in my own life.

So I choose to remember—
Every tear, every laugh, every heartbeat.
The bitter and the sweet intertwine,
A complex flavor that defines our existence.
For in remembering you, painful as it may be,
I remain whole, I remain me.