What is it that a string around the finger says?
Remember? No.
Remember to remember. It is Fool’s Regress:
Our little act of distancing, that, ruse enough,
Will bring up front
Such dark and backward as we otherwise repress,
Once tedium begins to do the work of time.
Trash, payments, locks—
Abysses all; and, worse, birthdays in middle age.
No fool forgets to order lobster; chill champagne.
Might that occur
His aide-mémoire had better be a cordon rouge.
For double-duty, heavy-duty, handcuffs serve
After the fact.
The chains of masochism prompt. Is it the mind?
And if they come, hospital or the gallows, like
Detail to crowd
Then wholly to estrange the one detail our life,
Mnemonics at the end will bring it flooding back.
Around the arm
The bracelet with the dose; around the neck the noose.
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