By Robin Rosen Chang

My memory wanders like a dog,
searching for treats and looking for balls,

but my mother’s memory
never lost track of anything,

like the time I didn’t call her
in the hospital after her surgery
when I was thirteen,

or the time I told her I wanted
to live with my father
and his new wife,

or the time the police questioned me
after someone torched a neighbor’s fence.

I wish I could’ve told her I’m sorry
but her memory slunk away.

My memory fetches old bones, reminders
I strayed. Across a border,
I smuggled dope. I swallowed
unprescribed prescription pills,
was careless with sex.

Is it worse to recollect or forget?

I wonder if this dog will get lost.
Will it skulk from yard to yard
or stand at the fence, yelping
and howling at nothing?

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Robin Rosen Chang is the author of the full-length collection, The Curator’s Notes (Terrapin Books) and a 2023 New Jersey Council on the Arts poetry fellow. Her poems have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Plume, The Journal, Verse Daily, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. She has an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. robinrosenchang.com