Damnatio Memoriae* Five years ago, after a quarrel, you locked up a girl in bedroom While you bunked in your couch, totally pissed off Next day, when you woke up from a migraine, she had gone Later, two cops knocked your door. Yet it turned out to be nothing particular They just ‘invited’ you to the precinct for a little ‘talk’ It’s not even the first time you were busted into a police station You were free to go after a scolding by a senior officer Who happened to be your girlfriend’s uncle She was dead to you, for sure. She never shown up again Three days later, your parents came back from a biz trip Nobody knew this episode, not even the gossiping doorman After that summer, you graduated from the college And got a job in the then burgeoning virtual reality industry The only problem was, you started to remember things-- Strangled neck, pale body, black cable, and big canvas duffle bag Flashbacks like some shitty trailer for a cheap horror film You drove your rusty coupe to a newly built landfill at midnight Walking dreamingly among piles of poignant war trash Funny story, as one of the student environmentalists You joined a demonstration against that landfill last year, together with her You two even broke into the fence and vandalized its incinerator You were arrested on site and yelled that you would shut it down one day It was her uncle who bailed you out and smoothed things over Now you only wished that garbage dump would never be relocated again Yes, you would like to toss her belongings to that incinerator That’s the decent way to destroy memory, but you don’t wanna get caught Red-handed by some Good-Will-Hunter-like night watch-- That would be too incombustible for an infernal dream You had deleted Antigone, her phone number as a start Then you deleted three loved houses, two cities, some realms you owned (On internet), two rivers, a (sexual) continent (No, you don’t miss them) That’s what Ex Communication’s all about--no communication Incommunicado, radio silence--a slow death in a quicksand Love is like a tailgate party, you never really enjoy unless you get drunk You never be able to drive away unless you sober up To quit love, you have to break the spells of love’s relics, if not fetish Don’t say you still kept her dress and shoes The war is never over * Damnatio memoriae means “condemnation of memory” i.e. to erase someone from history, which was a form of dishonor that could be passed by the Roman Senate upon traitors or others who brought discredit to the Roman State. --

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