Memo To My Future Self || Claire Scott

I pick you up my white-haired woman
            creased and milkless
                            & toss you         far into the future
where you will be spared
            rage       & resignation
the slow strangle of depression
              & unbounded bottles of booze
I bend down to gentle you         higher
to make sure                 you land at least
               ten years away

Do you remember drawing hearts on our notebooks
with the initials of our latest love/practicing kissing
pillows so we would be sure to know/baby oil summers
on bikinied beaches/applications to medical school/
dreams of a Nobel Prize/for curing narcolepsy/
years slid past picked clean of purpose/ the world
swaying/illegible/steeped in remorse

Or should I put you      in a witness
            protection program      to save you
from days of    not eating        not caring
                if your bones glow in the dark
nights of            pills for wingless dreams
               swallowed by oblivion
I touch your cheek        delicate as fairy floss
              & give you         several thousand dollars
to start again   to begin a new life
               without the cold-boned
                              burden of me

Claire Scott is an award winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has appeared in the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review, Enizagam and The Healing Muse among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and Until I Couldn’t. She is the co-author of Unfolding in Light: A Sisters’ Journey in Photography and Poetry.

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