Song of Forgetting

Dan:
This house and all these rooms?
Last Christmas or last year?
Out back the dogwood blooms—
Diana:
Do I really live here?
Dan:
The paint, the walls…
All this glass and wood…
You don’t recall?
Diana:
How I wish I could.
Dan:
Our house on Walton Way—
The house with the red door?
Our trip to St. Tropez—
The whole week a downpour?
Natalie:
My first few steps…
And my first lost tooth…
What, nothing yet?
Diana:
To tell the truth…
Dan:
Sing a song of forgetting…
A song of the way things were not.
Sing of what’s lost to you,
Of times that you never knew…
Sing of not remembering when,
Of memories that go Unremembered, and then
Sing a song of forgetting again.
That day our child was born—
Our baby girl’s first cry?
That grey and drizzly morn—
I’ve never felt so high.
Diana:
The day we met…
And we shared two beers…
Dan:
Then?
Diana:
I forget.
Dan:
But that’s nineteen years.
Natalie:
What a lovely cure—
It’s a medical miracle.
With a mind so pure
That she doesn’t know anything.
Dan:
It’s there, I’m sure— Natalie:
'Cause memories don’t die. Why? Diana:
They don’t die. They die… I’ll try.
Dan, Natalie & Diana:
Sing a song of forgetting
A song of the way things were not.
Sing of what’s lost to you,
Of times that you never knew.
Sing of not remembering when,
Of memories that go Unremembered, and then
Sing a song of forgetting
Again.