Poem: I Can't Remember and I Can't Forget

Vestigial questions echo in swimming high-school hallways.
Vague in their now periphery-nature,
Haunting in their imperative:
Of life's intent. Of broader hope. Of being right, almost always, and knowing it.
But swimming out and down, now breathless, filled with languid panic--
I can't share the air they need to exist, 'cause I need it just to live.

I stare at myself with red eyeballs. Is fatigue the drug I'm addicted to?
A young man half my age should be here staring back, cocky and cool. Where did he go?
I have those vestigial questions to ask him...

In fragment moments of clarity I almost-proudly remember
I scratched the white-washed concrete constructs of the institution.
I left my fingernails, and fingertips and bits of teeth there,
Though of course I left no mark.
That was not my destiny.
But the bruised and bleeding scars
Have left no mark on me
I've spent the years-intervening,
Healing to the point we're even.