Hi!

I'm Denise Duhamel, and  I will be reading my poem  "Dear Memory" from my book, Second Story. Dear Memory, what have you done with my keys?

I blame you though it's hard to hold a grudge these days  because I usually don't remember  why I was angry in the first place. I look at a person sure she's done me wrong though the inciting incidents are lost. Former students seem familiar, but their names disperse like cigarette smoke blowing towards a stool where I once drank myself sick.

Now I'm not even sure what city that bar was in, the welcoming pink neon letters, another cloud, as though I am looking at tiny print without my reading glasses. I was on a pink cloud when I first stopped drinking. In fact, I once looked up at the moon, weeping in gratitude.

So there, I do recall something! I was walking across the Brooklyn Bridge in an ex's sweatpants though I'm not sure anymore of his name or if I ever gave those sweatpants back. I'm usually halfway through a movie on Netflix when I realize I've already seen it, probably in an old-fashioned freestanding theater, perhaps a matinee or a midnight screening.

Perhaps a popcorn bucket on my lap— that is, if I wasn't on some fad diet. Did I take my pain pill or not? I'm drinking water but not sure I can detect that bad taste all the way back on my tongue.

Maybe I have been drinking  more water than I thought.  Is it time to go to the gynecologist again? The office usually sends me a reminder postcard, but today I'm holding a letter from the Breast Center saying it's time again for my mammogram. I usually get a prescription from the gynecologist about a month beforehand— this is how it's been the last few years.

I wonder if my doctor is retired or dead. I would call him, but I have forgotten his name.  It begins with an S and I think i remember the exit. I look through the stack of business cards I save for moments such as this, but no card for him.

I go to take out the recycling just moments after I took out the recycling. I stand at the fridge, its door ajar—the cold light bulb,  an idea for a poem which I've also forgotten, a sublime dream that woke me in the middle of the night,  a sublime dream I was sure I'd never forget. Ah, here is my key ring!

But this gold one with the big square head— what lock could it possibly open?