How the Dead want to be Remembered

When you remember me, picture me smiling.
A grin of a thousand laughs
Like sunshine on a Saturday.

Remember how my laughter bounced off
the walls and filled a room.
How you already knew me, when my laughter
reached your eardrums.

Remember me as I was.
With the same sweetness of honey.
How we adored the time we stole
from responsibilities
in between work weeks
at birthdays, and graduations, and weddings
and ordinary days that meant nothing on a calendar.

Light for me a candle,
as white as milk.
Illuminate my way into memory.
Whisper my name into the smoke of the flame
like an echo with a tail.

Say my name against conga drums.
Against the beat of my ancestors.
Let me hear you from my grave.
So that it carries me to my rest.

Read my lasting words in celebration
of a life lived and relived
tried and conquered.

Forget the times you worried.
When my voice quivered in fear.
When you prayed for my soul.

Before I surrendered it.
Before I surrendered completely.

Forget about sleeping pills.
And frantic phone calls.
And hospitals with white walls.

Forget how my body carried the heavy load of life
A life I once loved.
A life I clung to with white-knuckles.

Forget how when you told me you loved me…
like it was the last time
like it was the last chance
to save me from myself.

Forget my apology
For leaving you.
For taking away your friend.
Your sister.
Your daughter.

Please, remember me as I was.
Away from the dark.
Dancing in the light.

But, please remember me.

Photo Credit: timo_w2s Flickr via Compfight cc

 

Icess Fernandez

Icess Fernandez Rojas is a journalist, blogger, teacher, and writer based in Houston. She earned my BA in Communications from the University of Houston and my MFA from Goddard College. She’s been published in USA Today, NBCNews.com, HuffingtonPost and the Guardian. She’s had fiction anthologized in Soul’s Road: A Fiction Collection and published in literary journals including Minerva Rising and The Fem Lit Magazine. Icess is also a VONA/Voices of Our Nation Foundation alum.

Written by 

Icess Fernandez Rojas is a journalist, blogger, teacher, and writer based in Houston. She earned my BA in Communications from the University of Houston and my MFA from Goddard College. She’s been published in USA Today, NBCNews.com, HuffingtonPost and the Guardian. She’s had fiction anthologized in Soul’s Road: A Fiction Collection and published in literary journals including Minerva Rising and The Fem Lit Magazine. Icess is also a VONA/Voices of Our Nation Foundation alum.

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4 thoughts on “How the Dead want to be Remembered

  1. This is easily one of the best pieces of literature that I’ve read in a long time. It’s writing like this that challenges me and wants to make me a better writer. Every once in a while you read something that stops you in your tracks, and this was it for me.

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