Remember

Remember this.
Remember tonight.
Remember the rain
hitting the window,
the train’s whistle
cutting through the wind while the night moves southwards.
Remember.

Remember this.
Memorize this.
These were the words she uttered,
warm and wet, softly and lazily,
while a brief summer storm washed away the dirt
on your bedroom’s window.

And you promised you would remember everything,
and you tried, you tried hard.
But even then you were already starting to forget.

Time goes by, and you learn.
You learn, for instance,
that the soul is a complex system
and solitude is its only constant.

Yes, these last nights have been long,
quiet,
monotonous.

Yes, you know well that she does not want to forget you;
you do not want to forget her either.
But who knows…
perhaps you are forgetting her already.
Perhaps you are forgetting her, little by little,
as you write these clumsy lines
of nostalgia and oblivion.

by Juan Cruz

Juan David Cruz Duarte was born in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1986. In 2010 he immigrated to the United States in order to get a PhD at the University of South Carolina. Some of his essays, poems and short stories have been published in the Colombian literary magazine Escarabeo Revista literaria. Cruz’s poetry has also appeared in Jasper Magazine. He published a collection of short stories (Dream a Little Dream of Me: Cuentos Siniestros) in 2011, and a short novel (La noche del fin del mundo) in 2012.