How to remember

HOW TO REMEMBER

I’m compiling the last photo album of him.
Which pictures are keepers? Which are redundant
and which are forgettable?

Him at twenty-four, motorcycle in the cul-de-sac,
me as a toddler on his lap, both of us wearing
the same ornery family grin.

The ones of him among us,
his fingers a sneaky rabbit above the head
of whoever got stuck next to him.

The ones of him holding his own child,
the sense he might at last be grown
beyond all we hoped he’d leave behind. 

Which is needed more now,
to remember him truthfully
or to remember him generously?

What to do with these images of all that he took 
from others, all that he stole and stored 
and hoarded in that dark house of his?

Images of absence, crimes no one will speak of.
These glimpses of the people you love
calling you every name but your own.

What to do, gather all of this together,
not discard a single one, grieve what was
and wasn’t all at once?

Or to choose—call it gleaning,
call it curating, call it embellishing,
call it simply, This is how I want to remember him now.

Out of the bright and broken and left behind,
these are the things we piece back together
yet fail to make peace with it all.

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What I’m currently reading: George Saunders’ Liberation Day, Julie Blackmon’s Midwest Materials, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

What I’m currently listening to: Cut Worms’ Breath Mule, Zach Bryan’s American Heartbreak

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Peace & grace,

Andrew