How to Forget
Eleanor Goodbody
1. go to a river. breathe in winter until your throat hurts. stop. pretend you’re throwing your body into water. picture it. you float now. soundless. aching. calm.
2. kill time by biting fingernails. stain your sheets with blood. press a shower head to your stomach. drink hot coffee with a straw. think of pain as a stinging comfort.
3. walk and walk and walk and walk and walk and try to carry a bed up four flights of stairs.
4. let yourself grow tired of flowered bedspreads and fire escapes. don’t think about how you left your phone on the bathroom floor last night or how he wrote a poem on your garbage can.
5. wait in the heat. until sweat lines your body. jump a fence. keep walking yourself home until you’re all gone.
6. pick a point. forget it. walk around in circles. confuse yourself. understand that the weather doesn’t care about heartache. tell everyone you meet that you can tell a lot about a person from the way that he says goodbye.
7. stand in the middle of the street until everything is silent. muffled. soft. watch the sun set. walk in wet socks. check your pockets.
8. take a train. pack all the mornings and trips to Manasquan into a backpack. hold onto all of him as you board.
9. start showering in the middle of the day. don’t try to recognize roads or buildings. only pay attention to the mist that hangs in air. reach out. feel the rain.
10. realize that he never promised to write words on the inside of your forearms. fuck him in that small hotel room shaped like a cube. in his bed by the window. blinds closed. slow breathing. he’ll break a rib. or two. you won’t care.
