Member Poem

It is a smell— a sweet lavender from running through fields or an overwhelming vanilla from tailing behind your mother or a fragrant burnt from blowing out candles.
It is a taste— the saltiness lingering in the ocean air or bitterness from a disastrous Thanksgiving or soggy from your first kiss with a girl or spicy transporting you right back home.
It is a sound— a heavy bass from your gothic teens or the endless cry of a child no more or an orchestral organ when your sister died or the song you danced to at your prom.

It is a “once”, a “before”, a “was”, a “remember”, a “no longer.” It is gray all around. Yet somehow strokes of colours stain it still. It strikes you in the chest, rips out your heart and squeezes it so tightly your eyes well up.

It is the ghost of a feeling; a reminder. A reminder that time moves only forward, even when the past is calling you to come back. A reminder that you never know what you’ve got until it’s gone. A reminder that we always let go of what we love.