We forgave. We remembered. We made cocktails. We got tender.
— Jenny Hollowell from “A History of Everything”

If we live long enough, with luck,
we soften around the edges,
some of us growing doughy,
most of us wrinkly, even in places
that surprise us—the corners of our eyes,
around the ankles, like elephants, whose
famed memories we wish we possessed.

If we live long enough, we will watch others leave,
we imagine, before their time. Which means
before we want them to. This, too, tenderizes us.
We let go of old grudges; we forget long ago hurts
as we realize that we are not entirely blameless.

We remember things that surprise us:
the quality of light on her hair when
she said, “I love you,” or the tremor
in his voice when he said, “I’m proud of you.”

The way the baseball thunked into the mitt.
The shock of diving into cool water.
The way fall leaves annually performed
perfect pirouettes to the ground.
How we twisted or jived or jitterbugged
away that enchanted evening we hadn’t
thought of in decades.

If we’re lucky, we live long enough to let go
of unpleasantries, let bygones be truly gone.

We forgive and forget because in the end,
if we do this right, our hearts pump only love,
churn pure gratitude through our old blue veins
that river our hands, that hold each other tenderly—
our last, best memory.