Remember to Remember

I’ve written today’s to-do list on one side
and last night’s dream on the other.
Somewhere between them
is the doorway to my life.

In the morning,
I trust the list.
It has edges,
boxes I can fill,
verbs that behave.

Call this person.
Send that email.
Buy milk.

Remember to remember.

By night
I trust the dream.
It speaks in symbols
and refuses to explain itself.
People are there who shouldn’t be.
Places exist that never have.
Something important happens
and I wake up
before I know what it was,
before I could understand it.

All day
they take turns guiding me.

The list tells me
what must be done
to keep the world from slipping.

The dream tells me
the world is already slipping
and asks what I plan to do about it,
asks why I thought
I could hold it still.

Somewhere between them
is the life I’m actually living.

Not the one I planned,
not the one I imagined,
but the one made of missing things—

the part of the dream
I can feel
but can’t recall,

the item on the list
I meant to write down
but didn’t,

the name
on the tip of my tongue,

the thought
I almost had
before I decided
it wasn’t important,
that I’d remember later

I move back and forth
between what I know
and what I almost knew.

My conscious mind
builds the map.

My subconscious
keeps drawing doors
where the map says
there shouldn’t be any,
keeps changing the roads
while I sleep

In the morning
I wake up knowing something
I can’t prove,
forgetting something
I needed.

They say knowing
is half the battle.

But most days
it feels like the battle
already happened
somewhere between the dream
and the list,
while I was busy
writing things down
so I wouldn’t forget

I’m standing in the doorway
holding a piece of paper
with half of it missing
and the other half
written in a language
I almost understand.

Somewhere between them

Somewhere between
what I meant to do
and what I meant to say,
between what I remember
and what I refuse to,
between what I know
and what keeps changing anyway.

is the only place I ever live—

in the pause
before I remember,
in the moment
after I forget,

right after I realize
what’s going on,
and right before
it isn’t true anymore.

in the narrow doorway
between the life I can describe
and the one
I can only feel myself
walking through.