The best revenge is forgetting
my therapist calls memory loss a symptom
when it’s a skill. I smash my head into glass, to cut
the mold off a cheddar rind and Ah!
Good as new, what’s their name again?
Oh, I can’t be bothered to recall one
bruised clementine from a tangerine they all
feel the same in my mouth, mealy amnesiacs.
I think he was a chef or maybe a butcher?
Details, details, details. What matters is
they both know their way around a knife.
Glug glug glug, where am I? How’d I get on
Palmerston Avenue? I know those lampposts
anywhere, the light swims in those warm globes . . .
Hey, have you ever seen a show? Any show. Ever.
I’m hungry. How can you be acid crying and also
close to cumming? I’ve never hated touch more.
What’s the difference between a butcher and a surgeon?
Something about the goal of the bite, I mean incision?
One is for dinner service and the other is to draw the venom out.
What was the last thing he texted me? I never saved his contact.
I grabbed my skin all over the floor and called the uber,
I swear it had scales just like me only instead of orange
they were green. Oh . . . ya.
He called me a snake.
Cassandra Myers (My’z) (they/she/he) is an award-winning poet, performer, dancer, illustrator, and counsellor from Tkaronto, Ontario. Find them @cass.myers.poetry and at cassmyers.com.
Questions and Answers
What inspired or motivated you to write this poem?
Survivors of sexual violence are often told that their lack of recollection around a sexual trauma is symptom of violence. It is often used against them, seen as disorderly, a form of madness, and a way to discredit them. Here, I reframe memory loss as a survivor skill. No matter what they tried to make of us, we made them irrelevant, and we go back to remembering on our terms — we ride a horse, we go sailing, we shuck an oyster, we leave the shell.