static and polaroid

By Megan Shaffer

the memories of us have turned into static in my TV set brain and sometimes I can only hear you like i can hear the weather, slightly cloudy and rainy, a grained voice 

            it’s not like I’ve forgotten us, but my brain has tried to wash you out and tumble you dry so many times you’ve got a rose gold tinted filter over the old you, a bright red faded to a soft pink – nostalgia does that I guess

                        the last time I drove home I had to take the long way home just to avoid seeing your house and basement, the places where you whispered against my skin and your carpet burnt my knees, and our promises were both made and destroyed 

the long way home twists me into the part of town where I have to pass the house where an ex-boyfriend had me write my name on his basement bedroom ceiling in red expo marker

            because he wanted to be for forever and even if we weren’t, right now was so damn good that he didn’t want to forget it and he didn’t mind looking at my name and feeling heartbreak in the future

            we didn’t end up being forever and he ended up moving out of that house, I can’t help but wonder what color of paint is over my name, and who is laying below it where I once did

each place I’ve been in this town I’ve left a piece of me – maybe one of my ribs because when I see these old footprints covered in dust in my brain it stings to breathe and I feel an absence so loud in my lungs that it turns my vision black

            black and white and salt and peppered memories of bruises on my shins and smoking a cigar that we bought from a gas station at midnight and laying on the roof of my car and telling three boys I love them all in the span of a year

                        love back then was elastic just like time and everything always happened in fast forward and there was no chance to rewind. 

but sometimes, the polaroid memories flash so bright in my head that they seem more like truth than time crippling to what I want to see, 

            so this is either a polaroid of truth

                        or a white lie of nostalgia. 

Megan Shaffer is a senior Creative Writing and Publishing and Editing double major. She is from Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania and is the captain of the swim team along with being a member of Alpha Delta Pi.