Remembering

When you close your eyes
and all you see is what you don't want to see.

The colors, textures, and scents
all fill your senses behind closed lids.

The memory has been packed up
tucked away behind the gate, boxed up, forgotten.

When you close your eyes
and it all comes flooding back.

The hours and weeks and months
working to put it behind you matter not.

Less than a minute was all it took
for the moment to return to consciousness.

Now it is all you see
when you close your eyes.

Fingers crossed, wishes on stars,
whatever you can do to put the memory away again.

The scents, breeze, piney and floral,
The colors, orange, tan, white, golden, and green.

The textures, clearly visible even now
wood grains, corduroy, denim, grassy, velvety, rough.

Maybe not today, or this week or month,
but back in the faded darkness, behind the gate, and into the box.

This memory will once again,
leave my consciousness and I will resume fighting, living, growing.

For now, closing my eyes
is going to mean working twice as hard to change the picture.

Covering up the scene,
replacing the colors, the scents, the textures.

And I will move forward
stronger than before, better able to live the life I am destined for.