Let's forget. A poem of Batticaloa

Let's. Hurry up and get rid of it.

Let's hurry up and bury it. 

Let's hurry and burn it 

Or burn what's left of it

Or burn and bury it. Hurry. 

Let's. Participate in the act of forgetting. 

Let's call it "resilience."

Let's pave it over

Put a new building in its place

Widen the road next to it

Make it a green space

Plan it away. 

Hurry. Or. We can take our time. 

In this climate it will go fast enough

The evidence already in shards and scraps

It will fall away 

It will crumble on itself you'll see

The burning bits fluttering heavenward

Or landing in pits hellish with standing water and plastic garbage, incongruous water hyacinths decorating the mess. 

Let's gather. Now that we can. 

Get down from our motorbikes

Stretch our arms

Fill our phones with selfies

Whole universes of selfies

Encyclopedic, voluminous, 

Selfie as evidence

Selfie as evidence of a lost past a passed past a buried past a past that didn't happen. Not here. Not there. 

Bury our pasts in electrons

More better than brick and mortar or burning or flooding or widening make forgetting a happy dance of electrons and electronics and electricity

Let these pulses work on our behalf

Hurrying up and getting rid of

Hurrying up and burying

Hurrying up and burning

Or burning the parts

Or burning and then burying the parts

Forgetting the cumbersome place names and urls and replacing them with apps to make more selfies and publish more selfies and like more selfies

Finding new smaller places now that we're empty nesting

And kids are selfie-ing

And getting down from their bikes

And congregating in the shade

And giggling widely

In arcs and slouches along the lagoon