"Brainwashing the Heart into Long-term Memory" by Shareen K. Murayama

Brainwashing the Heart into Long-term Memory

I tell myself there's a robe out there:
something to slip on and try out like a new lifetime.
There’s a new robe out there, I tell myself,
that I can’t wrap my head around —
a white terror-cloth, shrouding people
silent as the dead while not talking about the dead in your life.

If I permit myself to silently rave into a white new terror,
one day I’ll be out of it, unbuttoned to another size, another lifetime,
until somebody’s lifeline kicks in.

And I will kick myself in the lifeline and ask,
Why did you paper your heart?
Didn’t it hurt pin-balling memories down a hallway
with short-term promises of back-in-ten-minutes?

They say following your heart means losing your mind.
But there's no drawer big enough for pressing your papered heart.
Besides, who would wear it now?

Shareen k. murayama

Shareen K. Murayama is a Japanese American, Okinawan American poet and educator. She has degrees from OSU-Cascades and the University of Hawai`i at Manoa. She’s a 2021 Best Microfiction winner as well as a poetry reader for The Adroit Journal. She has pieces published or forthcoming in The Margins, MORIA, Juked, Bamboo Ridge, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. You can find her on IG & Twitter @ambusypoeming.

Headshot: Nicole Tam

Photo Credit: Staff