You Don't Need To Remember Poem by Joan Xie

You certainly don't need to remember my smile,
often I don't smile, nor do you need
to remember my tears
for I'd never cried in front of people
except two times, each was for trivial matters.
Nor do you need to memorize my verses.
As for those sweet words like love and beloved,
spoken to you after we drank wine and ate olive on the spike,
as for those half-moons I splashed on you,
those second and the fifty dates
we never talked again
and those nights pregnant with aroma and soft glows,
I suggest you forget all.
You may also forget your hidden longing
while you caressed my back,
a key clicking in the lock
and a wooden horse on the chain grabbed by a bed sheet,
and the inevitable complexity of our tortured selves,
and the shared mirror and summer clock
and the vastness above us,
and our move to open the magic box.
You don't need to remember any.
You don't need to remember my name, address, youth, aging
and my date of birth, even my date of death.
For I: — I want you to use all your memory to cherish
one November day, madden with crimson,
we crossed the purpled field, climbed to the hilltop,
my hand was in yours; my head was on your shoulder,
my silence entirely belonged to you —