If the act of remembering changes the memory, how can you be certain

by Daniel Brennan

If the act of remembering changes
the memory, how can you be certain

you loved him so much? an audience member asks
the Poet. A pause of silence, a shallow cough
from someone amidst the throng gathered there.
The Poet’s eyes do not carry the same green
that they did before; something in them
has been given over to time. But they navigate
the room with ease; no need to search the ceiling’s
dusted beams, or the many dark corners
of this reading room’s body, for an answer.
I do not remember the slice of river that rolled past
the hill near my childhood home, and yet I’m certain
that I nearly drowned in it; that my small shape
plunged through the ice in a muted gulp;
that the river’s long blue tongue
found pleasure in my body’s grooves, and
that under my flesh it was weaving
an ancient music that can be found in the bones of all
dead things held tight within its diamond jaws.
The room waits for an answer. They wonder if
the Poet did love him the way each unfurling line
suggests, or if he was only the recalibration of desire
through the softened lens of time. If the cold
bed where they spent their final morning
swelled beneath them as he had described, if his
long-gone physique, stolen by sickness, still
bore into the Poet’s most ravenous dreams, if the backdrop of
a hospital’s silence was enough to prove
how beautiful the sound of a lover’s breath
can be. What good is a memory if it must
be kept frozen and still, unchanged? What good
is a boy if he does not surface once more
through a river’s cruel mask, his father’s hand
pulling him from the cold? What good is
any of this life if we cannot make love
even more of a miracle than it was? The Poet
smiles, the way all saints do before the lights
go out. He says, you’ll just have to trust me.

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Poet Daniel Brennan (he/him) is a queer writer and coffee devotee from New York. Sometimes he’s in love, just as often he’s not. His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize/Best of the Net, and has appeared in numerous publications, including The Penn Review, Sho Poetry Journal, and Trampset. For more of his work, follow him on Instagram @danieljbrennan_.

Artist Patrice Sullivan lives and works in Phoenix, AZ. Sullivan received her BFA from Massachusetts College of Art, her MFA from University of Pennsylvania and taught painting for 25 years at Colorado State University. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally.