The first step is admitting it: I am a willful forgetter
(I’ve taken this first step many times)

My bones are inclined to forget
The crick in my neck
the dull ache in my wrist

It should be obvious how they got this way
It is obvious

somewhere in the recesses
Black drongo common kingfisher
I summon memories like birds

I assign them colours
If I admire the way they swoop

and soar
dive and catch
if I separate myself

from them make them
pretty things

with wings
things
outside myself

things that sing things
that eat the bugs

that plague me
I can both
remember them

and send them
scattering

like birds
Kite. cormorant heron the colour
of a pale amethyst

If I think of them this way
the way they move

is not frightening
the way they plunge
and peck the way they

persist
buoyed

by a gust
I cannot see
After Dionysus set

tigers upon Amethyste
he wept his rage fallen

into wine-
coloured tears
that stained the girl

turned
to stone

It’s how amethysts
got their colour
how my memory

the one I keep trying to send
into flight

was stained
Rage
An apology

The egret a white flag
Thin throat Thin song

It’s impossible to hear egret
without
an echo

Regret My thoughts
are scattering

like sandpipers
I am falling
out of reason The birds

are losing their feathers
The wind

is forcing them
to land They are waving
like flags

like surrender like
egrets

feet planted
in thick
mud

Longlisted for the 2018 CBC Nonfiction Prize, Barbara Tran is indebted to Hedgebrook for radical hospitality at a crucial time, and to the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for essential support. Barbara is currently at work on a novel and a new poetry collection. Her poetry is forthcoming in Ploughshares. Barbara lives in Toronto with her partner and their two canine adoptees.

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