Fred Aiken Writing

i don’t remember the exact day we met,
but that’s a lie,
because i have the moment ingrained into my head,
playing on a loop on the hook of my hippocampus,
that sounds a lot campier than it actually is,
because i assume that my memory of you is probably false,
or at least distorted,
like the fraying edges of a daguerreotype 
that survived a coupe of house fires
and that one time an ogre wandered into the backyard
and mistook the memory of you as something edible
before realizing that this wasn’t a fantasy world,
and the reliance of mythological creatures
isn’t helpful when trying
to pinpoint reality with perception