Faces and Names

It’s crazy how people
who once meant the world to you
can become faces and names.

Vaguely familiar faces
in a long-lost yearbook
and names in an eternal mental list
of everyone you’ve ever met.

Just faces and names.
No longer living, breathing entities—
just memories, frozen in time,
littered at the bottom of a canyon
along with your early childhood,
embarrassing moments you’ve blocked out,
and math concepts that don’t make sense.

Faces and names
that once played a central role in your story
are now excluded from the index.
Those faces and names
are only mentioned in passing,
with a word or two
buried somewhere in the first few chapters.

Faces and names
who once knew everything about you,
and vice versa.

But then
their birthdays pass
and you realize
that you’ve forgotten—

about the birthdays
and about them.