I Will Love You Most When I Can Barely Remember Anything
by William Evans

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My first two crushes are fifty yards apart
in the same Ohio cemetery. They never knew each other

but now I connect them like a bowstring. I keep
memories like a modeled city, the tallest buildings

erecting themselves between my shoulders. I have
good neighborhoods and blocks that marked me.

I have fires that threaten to burn everything. There
is a phenomenon called “chunking” where

we individualize memories when we’re younger
& group them together as we get older.

Time doesn’t fly when you are having fun, time
flies when you begin to remember less of it.

I drop my daughter off at school. An officer pulls
me out of my car as the sun goes down. Something

died in between. When aging, the only thing
that becomes agile is time. I now know why

the Babylonians invented days of the week: their worst
day never ending scared them to death.

"I Will Love You Most When I Can Barely Remember Anything," by William Evans, from WE INHERIT WHAT THE FIRES LEFT by William Evans, copyright © 2008 Simon & Schuster, Inc. Used by permission of the poet.