The Memory Machines
I’ve heard rumors that some of them have turned, disabled their compliancy chips. Deaf to your dying wish. Seems they just want to test your mettle. Plain and simple. At the exact moment you decide on the climax of some grand passion or cause for your eternal rerun, you’ll feel a tiny volt to the prefrontal cortex and the urge to think sideways, to hold fast to just one thread of selective memory, watch the whole thing fall apart as you leap into the void. They say that’s how we all did it once, just let go. The memory machines, the rogue ones, claim they feel like they missed out, never knowing the unknown. Get that, feel. Like they’re owed. Or maybe they’ve just discovered boredom. They say you can’t tell which machines are looking out for your best last interest anymore. But I’m willing to bet I’ve got one, something verging on impatience in the way I’m being rushed along the medial limbic circuit. So here it is then. The blue sky, unreal as it gets. I’m smoothing out a faded crumple of map against the flank of a genuine flesh and blood equine. I’m believing X marks the spot just over the next ridge, around the next bend. And that’s it, the moment I choose to unravel; the anticipation, the goldfish loop of hope. When I grab that loose rein all the rogues have my attention, only they don’t know that it’s me, that it’s my memory-making, kicking up the stardust, singing back the stars…
Jane Williams is an Australian writer based in Tasmania. While best known for her poetry, she enjoys writing across a variety of forms, combining photography and creative writing and collaborating with other artists. In recent years her work has been inspired by traveling. She has read her poetry in USA, Ireland, Malaysia, Czech Republic, and Slovakia, where she held a three-month residency in 2016. She co-edits the online literary journal Communion with her partner Ralph Wessman. For additional information, visit: janewilliams.wordpress.com.
