sense memory

There i was, sprawled out on my twin bed looking up at the posters consuming every inch of my room. A beat blue comforter draped across my body.
I heard the jingling of his dogtags as he swaggered his way toward me.
Patches leaped up onto the bed, giving it a good shake and then plopped his heavy body up against mine, curling up and nuzzling his mouth up against my beard.
I pressed my fingers against him and felt static electricity at my fingertips as I ran them through his coarse black and white hair.
He looked at me and let his tongue drop, I got lost in his grey eyes, those old age cataracts that stole his sight.

I awake in a run down bed, the broken wooden planks that support the mattress are swords in my back and the irritable buzz of an alarm clock forces me into reality.
I brush my teeth to wash away the taste of yesterday and shake the nostalgic feel that is trapped in the back of my skull.
I am fascinated with the soon to pass imagery of my old life in my old house with my old dead dog.
I tried to picture him and couldnt, but my brain had completely restructured him in dream state, he was in perfect form, I actually felt him, it was as real as it ever had been.

sense memory: interaction of the senses and the memory, and the ways in which certain sensory stimuli can trigger memories.

how strange, I can not remember many chapters in my life and yet I can remember the the oddest of things. there are certain feelings that stuck with me from memory.
the taste of blood in my mouth, the iron and that strange texture similar to thick water, the burning sensation of liquor coming out your nose, the pressure and shock of taking a fist to the face, the step by step pain route of bearing a boot to your testicles and the final stage; stomach sick and eager to curl up into a ball.

At the sight of a red hot steak, I salivate and can taste the sultry liquids flowing my down tongue, feel that texture of carcass in my teeth being mashed up and then dragged down my mouth as I swallow it.

the smoky dust filled smell of my great grandmothers house, the smell of death. the warmth of a body next to you in bed, and the smell of woman. the smell of burning incense and Indian food from when I was two, being baby sat by a Pakistan family, the cold steel of handcuffs against my wrists, the nausea in my stomach from being taxied in a cop car

all things I've been deprived of for long periods of time and yet I can remember them perfectly.

the pasty taste of cocaine in the back of my throat and the anxious jitters that shoot like electricity through my spine, like the electric shock I felt sticking a key into a light socket when I was a kid, learning not to ever do it again, like the first time I burned myself on boiling water, trying to grab at noodles.

yet I cant remember my teachers names, or my friends names for that sake, can't remember anything from high school.

old friends always ask me, "remember when we did this/ when you said that to him/her / remember back in the day when...."

no I don't....much of my adolescence is lost, and yet I remember the taste of the lipstick of first girl I kissed

so strange, this...senseless memory.

i spit the toothpaste into the sink and give myself a good look, i ask myself, "Who the fuck are you and where did you come from you ugly bastard?"