Patterns So Engraved

By Queen Adekunle

I told my brain,

This is just a task to complete.

Forget them.

Do not look back.

Erase the patterns.

Forget the sound.

Forget their gait

Forget their favourites.

But the patterns were so deeply engraved.

I couldn't undo them.

I couldn't unlearn them.

I tried and tried,

yet every attempt failed.

I asked myself,

When did this happen?

How did this happen?

Why can't I erase it?

But my brain stood still.

It ignored my plea

To erase every pattern.

Instead, it betrayed me.

It replayed every single pattern,

Every word,

Every step,

Every memory,

Making a joke of me,

To myself.

Cognitive psychology says

It's simply my brain

Doing what healthy brain do.

My brain did exactly

What it was designed to do.

It learned.

It remembered.

It kept a record.

Now I search for a delete button

That was never there.

It has kept so many records.

I called it betrayal.

Cognitive psychology

Calls it learning.

And somewhere

Between the two,

Remembering began to hurt.

So I stopped begging my brain to forget.

Instead, I began teaching it

Something new.

So goal became

Writing new patterns until the old

No longer feel like home

Because healing

Isn't the absence of memory

It's the presence of new patterns.