Inventory of Promises I Forgot

The promise to call back.

The promise to write, to reply, to not let silence

become its own language.

The promise to keep a secret,

to guard it like a stone in the mouth,

to never let it slip between my teeth.

The promise to always tell the truth—

until the truth grew too heavy to carry whole.

The promise to love without fear,

without hesitation,

without calculation.

The promise to forgive.

The promise to forget.

The promise to forgive again,

even when forgetting never arrived.

The promise to return a borrowed book,

its spine already softened by someone else’s hands.

The promise to visit more often.

To send postcards.

To arrive on time.

To not drift away.

The promise to stay.

The promise to leave.

The promise to never look back—

which I broke the moment I said it.

The promise whispered into the dark,

never spoken in daylight,

sealed not with words

but with trembling breath.

The promise to hold on tighter,

to not let go this time.

The promise to let go,

to release without bitterness—

but my hands never obeyed.

The promise carved into my own skin:

I will survive this.

The promise scribbled in the margins of a diary,

ink fading,

paper yellowing,

still whispering faintly.

The promise of patience.

The promise of silence.

The promise of listening longer

than my own heartbeat.

The promise of forever,

spoken as if forever were

a thing one could wrap in ribbon

and keep safe in a drawer.

The promise to learn another language,

to speak to myself in gentler words.

The promise to quit.

The promise to begin.

The promise to change—

all left unopened,

like letters returned to sender.

The promise to stop repeating the same mistakes,

though repetition is its own gravity.

The promise to believe in miracles,

in love,

in recovery,

in second chances.

The promise to believe in myself.

The promise I gave to someone who never asked.

The promise I asked for,

and never received.

The promise I can’t remember,

but still carries the taste of longing—

a flavor lodged in the back of the throat.

The promise that felt sacred,

until it didn’t.

The promise of tomorrow.

The promise of always.

The promise of never again.

The promise of not this time.

The promise of next time, I swear.

The promise of safety,

made to a child version of me.

The promise of protection,

whispered to the mirror.

The promise made at an altar.

The promise made in a hospital room.

The promise made in the rain.

The promise made in bed,

skin to skin,

too tender to survive the morning.

The promise I buried so deeply

I forgot its name.

The promise I broke before I finished saying it.

The promise that broke me.

And still,

every promise I forgot

waits like an unclaimed parcel,

stacked in the dim post office of memory.

Each one marked fragile,

each one addressed to a version of myself

that never arrived to collect it.

This is the archive of my forgetting:

not empty, but overflowing.

An inventory of promises,

sacred and ordinary,

mended and shattered,

each one a thread pulled loose,

each one a vow

still echoing faintly in the dark.