the river of forgetfulness

the delete button allows you to take back

what you have said,

erase what you have written,

what has gone wrong or gotten sentimental

it gives you countless times to start over,

to keep quiet, this time or the next,

if you still don’t have anything better to say,

if you still haven’t come up with a good excuse

to interrupt & add your two cents

it gives you, a repeat offender, the opportunity

to correct on the fly your misspellings & discrepancies,

your occasional blunders before others

get a chance to hear you, to read between the lines

it allows you to undo

what no one else knows that took place,

to ignore muscle memory & agree, for a change,

with conventional wisdom

& act as if it didn’t happen, as if it didn’t hurt

& it takes you back to primary school

& your c-minus c-plus high school education,

to memories of your number 2 pencil eraser

& paper mate all-purpose liquid paper

nonchalantly inviting or enticing you

to hack into your own personal computer,

to locate & isolate not your soul or mind

but your own keyboard

& coping mechanism

the one you aren’t certain, if given the choice,

that you would consider,

that you would run to press & hold

to see what you could forget, what you could forgive

it allows you, if you’re into that sort of thing,

to update upgrade a myth

on your own terms, on a small scale,

to experience the health benefits

of the overly protected waters of the lethe

without you first getting a concussion

or needing x number of blows to your head,

without you having to die on you yourself

or on someone less fortunate

it gives you the opportunity   

to send to the showers a learned behavior,

to point the finger at the keyboard,

at an object & not a foreign or domestic subject,

not at someone else

it takes you back to the burning of books,

to the shredding of evidence,

&, how apropos, to the flushing of the toilet,

the blowing of your nose

c. a. campos, 2010