I only want to know your name.
there is a drizzle of homemade jam
on this memory i think i have,
like a hug under construction.
reaching out, but
stopping mid-air.
hello?
i want to ask you your name
and whether caring for sunflowers
is as difficult as it seems,
whether you have to breathe the yellow in
and out for it to keep living
like there would be no end to the madness,
like you could pluck out a yellowing syllable
from behind an old lover’s ear
and the whisper would have faded
but the scent would have stayed.
i want to ask you if sometimes when you forget all the words,
do you still remember the shapes?
and when you forget all the sunflowers,
do you still remember the yellow?
i want to ask you if there was nothing to document
the first time we held our hands out to each other
or reached out for a hug,
would you scroll down like it never happened
or would you backspace to the point of our precise meeting?
if i ask you whether sunflower dust
can preserve all our memories,
would you crush
the life out of one of these damned flowers
to prove your point about absolute disintegration
or would you say ‘only if you want it to?’
because i want it to
i want to tell you that sunshine lanes
are sometimes more memories
than sunshine itself
and if you keep walking for long enough,
you will discover
that sunflowers have enough yellow to resurrect all the lives you’ve lived
and all the people you’ve lived them with

which brings me to my original question

do you remember
my name

because i remember
forgetting to ask you yours.