Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

In the hum of a fluorescent-lit clinic,
they pause a flicker and dissolve the scar‑red letters
on the page of a heart that once beat for another.

The memories – those vivid flash‑cards –
are taken apart, one by one, like a jigsaw puzzle spooled through a Michelin‑starred wand.
Colour bleeds; we realise that the brightest hues
are oft the faintest, tucked inside a puddle of sunset.

Joel, his brow furrowed, unravels his own diary,
Killing words that curse and those that love,
while Clementine’s laugh, a ghost of her vanished skin,
rings across the neon‑washed corridor.

Is memory a mercy or a cruel prison?
Every glossed‑out photograph, every fibre‑optic dream
dimmers at the edge of the great wipe‑out.

And yet, as the dust settles, an echo lingers –
the faint perfume of an almost‑forgotten espresso,
the smell of rain on rusted bricks, the echoing click of a lock.

The spotless mind may be a clean slate,
but [the heart] remembers:
to love is to gather shards of light
even when the mind pretends to forget.