On The Tip of My Tongue, You Stay
What’s the word for when you let go without wanting to?
I am at the Poets House, looking down on the Hudson River and the park below when I see myself sprawled out on the green, my cardigan turned into a picnic blanket. There are boats along the water. There is a book in my hand. There is something in the shape of a memory, rising and expanding in front of me. I don’t know what it is.
::
And in a millisecond you arrive, unravel, and run around my brain. When I think of you, I see us during those long summer nights under light-polluted skies. I see us on the bench by the lake you called beach, throwing questions at the water, waiting for the tides’ replies.
The water whispered for only my ears to hear: you are not his only one.
::
Spring is a pain I’ve witnessed, delivered, imagined, and received. But with you, I can’t conjure a completed and colored memory of what happened. There are more years behind us than we spent together. A cliché, yes. A truth, yes. Where I met you is not where I left you, but every entrance is an exit for someone to walk through. You could never stay in one place for long.
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I was holed by you. Now, I am whole despite you. This is not a vindictive gesture; this is a fact of my life.
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There was a time when I commanded myself to remember: I reread old diary entries, vented to the mirror, skimmed through photo albums on my phone. I put the past right in front of me.
Nowadays, a feeling, image, or voice arrives in my head, and I can’t completely remember or locate where the memory comes from. I blink and see an empty parking lot. I see faded blue jeans. I hear the hum of a song I know all the lyrics to. But, there is no further interrogation, I leave you where I left you.
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When a person cannot retrieve a specific word in response to a visual or auditory sensation but feels like they're about to remember, it’s called lethologica.1 The memory exists in us but outside of our reach, barricaded somewhere in our brain. Usually in the right prefrontal lobe where most of our executive functions occur, like our working memory.2 We reach and reach and reach for what is trying to leave us. If we’re lucky, in our reaching for words or memories, (or if we’re able to retrieve what is lost) then what we’re searching for will come back to us.
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There was a time when you held a monopoly over my mind. Now, it’s hard to conjure you here. I can’t find much to write about, there are few feelings I remember, voices wiped clean from my memory, faces decaying not from death but distance. You lived. I grew up and lived again. What came after this? I don’t know.
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I made a list of words I banned myself from using (though so far I have used a few here). No grief. No memory. No summer. No leaving. No past. I’m emptying the bank of language I stashed after our splintering. Every etymology traces back to you.
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What’s the word for when you let go without wanting to?
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I am above time, in time, and running out of time all at once. I call my forgetfulness healing, it’s confirmation that I’ve moved on. I turned the healing into an errand on my daily to-do list. Somedays I got to it, others I didn’t. It was an active process, not something to be flimsy about. This is something I had to learn because of you.
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It’s been so long and there is nothing left to heal from. I do not say I won. I say I have simply grown up.
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A few years ago, I flew to London to stay with my friend for a few days in March, and while sitting on the floor of their apartment, I thought of you. I don’t know if it was the fire of the taper candle in front of me, or my diary and pen resting on the coffee table, but something landed in my mind. I did not trick you into staying, I let you go. I don’t know what I was holding onto. I was already emptied by then.
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There is more here but I can’t remember.
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Most people after having a TOT (tip of the tongue) moment cheer at their remembrance. Their search is fruitful, and what they thought was lost makes its way back, though they weren’t completely abandoned.
I was looking at the Hudson River when a shadow appeared, and it was moments later when I realized it was you. There was no celebration. Only confusion. How long have you been dormant in my mind?
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Though I can’t find the words to express this. The language has always been mine and always will be, no matter how long it takes to translate these feelings into words. This sentiment is false when it comes to you.
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Through our severance, there was nothing to fight over. No friends or items to annex as my own. There was division, a transfer of simple sentences to display in all my post-you conversations. I had to restructure my vernacular and the immediacy alarmed me. Look how quickly we cut each other out of our lives, look how quickly you were ready to leave, how willing I was to wait for you to change your mind.
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I forgot how much I used to miss you.
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In spring, there was a deer on a field blanketed by yellow flowers or weeds—I still don’t know because we hadn’t stepped out of the car, only watched through the open windows. I took a photo. Neither of us are in the frame.
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For my immediate post-you recollections (after the departure) my non-negotiables were loose song lyrics, guitar strings, and gold-lit car interiors. I will never render spite out of this. I hold no grudge. Most days it was beautiful, in a distant, lack-of-information kind of way. Every other time it was a reminder: I am mourning someone who was never fully mine.
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It wasn’t sadness. Not yearning or longing. Not missing you. There was no anger—never was. I was hurt (another word I can no longer use), and the hurt infected everything I touched. I am here, in the future, writing the words of a girl who no longer exists to a person that she doesn’t know anymore. This is a transcription of what she never said. I can’t remember everything.
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Some of the words still haven’t arrived.
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When I leave the Poets House, I place you outside of my mind. And as I walk through the park, the trees are generous with their shading, providing a darkness that cools, and never bruises. This is a gesture I am rarely offered, so I walk slower around the bend.
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Are there pieces of us still out there, lost and abandoned? Am I whirling in the back of your mind? Are there fragments of who we were before, suspended in the air waiting to land on your tongue? Is this a question for quantum physicists? Or am I secretly wishing you still remember me?
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(The latter.)
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To retrieve the lost word, scientists suggest “not thinking about it.” And in its absence, the word you are searching for will appear. They call this spontaneous resolution when the blank state resolves itself.3 You were a hurt I never resolved, until now.
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Something comes after this, but I can’t remember what it is.
(May 2024)
Ed. MDR
Girija PC, Shahal NP, Narayanan N. Lethologica in aging: An analytical study. J Ind Acad Geriat. 2022;18(1):9-14. doi:10.4103/jiag.jiag_32_21
Schwartz, Bennett L., and Janet Metcalfe. “Tip-of-the-Tongue (TOT) States: Retrieval, Behavior, and Experience.” Springer Link, Memory and Cognition, 4 Jan. 2011, DOI 10.3758/s13421-010-0066-8.
Abrams L, Davis DK. The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon: Who, what, and why. In Cognition, Language and Aging.