I wasn't born a poet.
I didn't emerge in this world
With a unique eye,
Wondering why people didn't see
What I saw.
I didn't emerge in this world
With a unique eye,
Wondering why people didn't see
What I saw.
Daimyon Londe was in a rush. The evening traffic was not. This difference was difficult to reconcile for the 21-year-old man, fresh license holder: he cursed, he flipped people off when their reactions were slow at the green light, and he was generally getting close to road rage. What stayed him was his destination that floated before his mind's eye: Logan Airport. For he was rushing to catch a flight to Tokyo, Japan, to see his mother's side of the family. He cherished his grandparents especially, and he had not seen them in over two years at that point.
Whenever he got the chance, he went fast. If he was to get a speeding fine now, at least it would be for a noble cause. He had been on a good streak for the last couple streets; checking his watch frequently, he convinced himself he could make it. He was still of the same mind when he rode straight down an empty intersection and found himself another person who was in a rush, from his left. He never saw it coming.
I never thought I'd become a poet.
The accident was a tragic event:
Robbed me of past and future alike.
I was left drifting in the present
Aimless...
The accident was a tragic event:
Robbed me of past and future alike.
I was left drifting in the present
Aimless...
He opens his eyes to blinding whiteness. His head screams in pain, so he closes them, which only helps marginally. Relying on his other senses, he figures that he is lying on a cushy bed in a quiet room. His knowledge takes him no further, and the gaps are filled by aching questions: where is he? why is he here?
Who is he?
The questions become too much to bear. The pain in his head, somehow, subsides, and he escapes to sleep.
The next day, he opens his eyes to blinding whiteness. His head screams in pain, so he closes them, which only helps marginally. Relying on his other senses, he figures that he is lying on a cushy bed in a quiet room. His knowledge takes him no further, and the gaps are filled by aching questions: where is he? why is he here?
Who is he?
“Daimyon?” He hears a voice call out to him, cutting through the darkness. Despite the pain, he forces his eyes open and pushes his head to the side. “You're awake!” He sees a man and a woman, both middle-aged, standing beside his bed, their faces wrinkled by worry-lines.
“W-who are you?” he utters weakly as he tries to place the two people. He tries harder when he sees their faces contort into expressions of shock—but he draws blanks.
“He's severely concussed. Temporary amnesia is expected,” a third person says in a reassuring voice. He cannot recognise her either; all he sees is her whisking away the other two. “Give him some time. We'll let you know when he's in a better state.”
The two want to stay but eventually give in to the third's wishes. Then the third leaves as well, bringing silence back to him. Silence and sleep.
The next day, he opens his eyes to blinding whiteness. His head screams in pain, so he closes them, which only helps marginally. Relying on his other senses, he figures that he is lying on a cushy bed in a quiet room. His knowledge takes him no further, and the gaps are filled by aching questions: where is he? why is he here?
Who is he?
“Good morning, Mr Londe.” He hears a voice call out to him, cutting through the darkness. Despite the pain, he forces his eyes open and pushes his head up. He sees a woman dressed in white, observing him. “How are we feeling?”
“W-who are you? Where am I?” he utters weakly.
“You're in hospital after your car accident, of course. You were quite badly hurt, but don't worry! You're young and you'll make a full recovery, given time. Your parents were here yesterday, do you remember?”
“My...what?”
“Your parents, Mr and Mrs Londe! They were here when you first woke up. They called out your name. Surely you remember that?”
“What's...my name?” He feels terrible having nothing to say but questions, but he cannot seem to formulate a coherent thought beyond them.
“Oh, my...this doesn't sound good.” The woman gets up. “Just hold on, I'll get the doctor.” She storms out of the room.
He would plead with her to stay and answer his questions, but he is too weak to do so. He falls back asleep.
————
A week later, he lies wide awake in the early morning. He has started having nightmares a few days back, and they often keep him from feeling rested. He is not alone: three people are in his room, with one talking to the other two in a slow, matter-of-fact tone, and the other two listening with varying expressions of surprise and sadness.
“We ran the tests on him. It turned out to be...more than just a bad concussion, unfortunately. He has anterograde amnesia.”
“What does that mean?”
“He can't form new memories. He remembers nothing of his life, and no matter how many times you tell him things, he forgets almost immediately,” the third explains, quickly continuing, “H-his memory can be trained, of course! People have gone a long way with this condition. He can, too, with enough time and training. But I'm afraid it's permanent and he'll...he'll need lifelong care and supervision.”
The other two look at him. They are his parents—he knows he is supposed to know this. These are the people he cherished the most—but nothing registers as he looks at them. Nothing but a deep well of sadness as he sees her mother fighting back tears.
“I'm...sorry...” he says, finding himself teary-eyed as well. Though he is still confined to his bed because of physical injuries, he musters his strength to sit up, letting his parents embrace him. “I'm really...really sorry...”
“I don't know what's happening to you. But you're still our son, Daimyon...even if you don't remember,” his father says.
His mother is next. “There's always hope, my dearest. If you can hold onto one thing...let it be that.”
The third person, a nurse, then tells his parents what comes next. He catches, and soon forgets, the most important bit: he is not getting out of this hospital anytime soon. He does not pay attention to the rest, as his mind is preoccupied with keeping one phrase afloat. After his parents leave, he asks the nurse for a pen and a sticky note. While she is gone, he murmurs the phrase to himself again and again, trying desperately to keep himself from forgetting it. She soon gives him what he asked for, only for him to find out he had no idea how to write it down.
He cries out in frustration, turning to the nurse. “Please, write it down... ‘There's always hope.’ Yes. That's it...thank you.” He takes the note and attaches it to his bedside table, figuring out that the table is what he sees first when he wakes up.
The nurse soon leaves him to rest and process the situation. For him, there is not much to process—he escapes instead to sleep.
Two months pass. For Daimyon, each day is the same: he wakes up in panic and confusion, the nurse on watch calms him down and explains his situation, then takes him to the day's training sessions. There, specialists help him strengthen his battered mind with various exercises, often training for hours on end. A key part of the exercises is repetition, as they attempt to establish a baseline of knowledge within the amnesiac man that he does not forget. There are some surprising results: he relearns reading and writing quite quickly, realising that his muscle memory remained unscathed. What's more, he finds that other forms of ‘general knowledge’ also come back to him with relative ease. Though he never consciously realises, he is soon able to get dressed, eat, and even ride a bike by himself. The specialists tell him—they have a love for explaining, despite knowing that the man will forget everything they tell him almost right away—that this means that his ‘implicit memory’ might not have been damaged the same way his ‘explicit memory’ was. In laymen's terms, they continue, this means that he can be a functional adult once again. They tell him all this with great big smiles on their faces, assuring him how fortunate he is to be able to rely on one form of memory when the other failed. Their satisfaction is rivalled only by that of his physical therapists, who tell him how proud he should be of his young body to recover so fast from a major car crash.
All these good news, and yet Daimyon does not become happier over the two months. Partly because he has to be told them every day, but partly also because he, for a reason he cannot pinpoint, does not feel that good about them in the first place. The sticky notes on his bedside table have multiplied; most prominent are the ones that say ‘Do Not Panic’ and ‘Days I've Been Here (add one every time you wake up)’. There are also more encouraging messages from his parents, who visit him regularly and even help with his training sometimes.
And yet, something still feels wrong for Daimyon.
At the end of the two months, the specialists tell him that he has successfully relearned all the skills he had before his accident, and that he was ready to reintegrate into the world outside. At that moment, a flash of clarity occurs to him. He finally realises what feels wrong.
“But what about my...memories?” he asks, much to their confusion. “Every day I...wake up, not knowing who I am. I still don't recognise my parents, or my friends, or...anyone. How can you say you're done with me? Will I be like this until I die?”
There is much discussion between the specialists at his outcry. In truth, they have long discarded the possibility of him regaining his explicit memory and focused on training his implicit. Still, they do not have the heart to send him away when he is so distraught, and so one of them finally steps forward.
“We are done with you. But there's someone else who might be able to help.”
I wasn't a natural poet.
When others had given up
The heavens gave me a muse.
She opened my eyes, she opened
My mind, to a better life.
When others had given up
The heavens gave me a muse.
She opened my eyes, she opened
My mind, to a better life.
“Good morning, Daimyon.” A different voice wakes him up a few days later. He opens his eyes, quickly scanning through the notes on his bedside table before sitting up. Standing before his bed is a young woman, not more than a couple years older than him. She wears a white coat and has a notebook in her hands. “I hope you don't mind the first name basis. I just thought we should get over the acquaintance process quickly.”
“Good...morning, ma'am. I've seen you before, haven't I? I'm sorry...”
“No, you...actually haven't.” She pulls out a chair and sits down beside him. “I'm Dr Maya Morandi, and I'm here to help you remember.”
“Remember? But haven't I been doing...these things...these, uh...” he looks at his notes for a quick reminder, “these training sessions already?”
“In fact, you're done with them. You don't remember, but you asked the staff here for help in building your explicit memory back up. That's when they called me—I specialise in treating amnesiacs. Total amnesia like yours is very rare, so I understand how anxious it must make you. But! There's no problem without a solution. Here, take this.” She hands him her notebook and pulls out a pen to go with it. “This notebook will be your main tool to recovery.”
Daimyon takes a second to examine the notebook. It fits nicely in his hand and is pleasant to look at with its simple, dark red cover. He opens it, finding its white pages empty.
“It's yours now,” Dr Morandi says. “And it's up to you to fill its pages.”
“With...what?”
“Think of it as your memory storage. The things you see, feel, and experience...you can write all of them down here, into this notebook. When you need to remember, all you have to do is read it.”
“Will it really help me?”
“Well, it's nothing magical. You're essentially picking up the brain's slack by storing things manually, in writing. People take a lot for granted when their memory is concerned, you know—but you and I both know that it's a very fragile thing. You have to be more observant and more conscientious if you want to fill in for it. But who knows? It might just help you see the world in a new way.” Daimyon nods, fiddling with the pen in his hand. “Go on then! Try writing down what you see.”
“I...” He stares at the page; it daunts him. He draws blanks.
“The first page is especially important! Think: what would you like to know right off the bat, every morning? Write those down.”
“Right off the bat...” he repeats, racking his brain for something, anything at all. Then he starts writing. He writes with great uncertainty, each word coming laboriously after the last, but he manages to get a few sentences down at the top of the first page. “Is...this good?”
The lines read the following: ‘Good morning. First of all, do not panic! You probably feel confused, but that's normal. You are Daimyon Londe and you suffer from amnesia. This notebook is here to help you deal with it.’
He hands the book to the doctor, who looks over it. “Name...situation...reassurance... Perfect! It's a great start.” She gives it back. “Now come! Let's go for a walk. Bring your book with you—you'll have plenty to write about!”
During their walk, she teaches him how to write on the fly and talks about the art of translating senses into words. Then he undertakes a new regime of memory training with her guidance, focused on holding thoughts in his head for long enough to be written down. When the day ends and a new begins, she is by his side in the morning to remind him to read the notebook, until it becomes muscle memory. Thus go the first several days of Daimyon Londe under the care and tutelage of Dr Maya Morandi.
————
After the first week or so, they are sitting once again in his hospital room. She leafs through his notebook while he waits in anticipation.
“You're making good progress, Daimyon. Your notes are getting more frequent and more detailed.” She hands it back. “They're just disorganised at the moment. Your writing, it's like an unfiltered stream of thought. Which is great for mimicking the mind, but not so much for being useful to you! You need some sort of order. I'd suggest dedicating some space at the end for the more...permanent features of your life. People, places, you know? Your friends, your parents, your home, these all deserve their own page. What do you think?”
“Right!” He quickly moves to the last pages, counting some back, then writing ‘PEOPLE’ at the top. With that same momentum, he starts writing the first entry.
“What are you—” She leans in to see, only to burst out in a chuckle. “Ah! You flatter me...”
The first entry, written with careful letters and encased with a square of importance, is ‘Dr Maya Morandi’.
Somewhat later, they are taking another walk. They are out in the city, and Daimyon feels like it is the first time in forever. Dr Morandi knows the truth, however—it is his second time outside. She walks ahead, taking in the buzzing Bostonian life and encouraging the man to do the same. He, on the other hand, is buried in his notebook, scribbling furiously.
“Something wrong? You're lagging behind,” she mentions.
“Sorry, doctor, I...there's just so much to write down! I can't keep up!”
“Then you're being too verbose! I'm glad we came this far, but the world is a constant overload of sensations. You need to figure out what to capture from it. It's an art in and of itself.”
He makes sure to note down the doctor's advice. One evening, when he feels particularly restless and thus sits alone in a park with his notebook, he stumbles upon it. Thinking, he flips to his People section, where Dr Morandi's profile greets him. Over the days it has blossomed into two whole pages filled with descriptions—and a surprisingly well-drawn sketch—of how she looks, what she wears, her traits and preferences, and what she means to him. It is, even by his own admission, a mess.
So he gets to rewriting it.
First he tries to come up with shorter, more concise substitutions for his words, but this only saves a small amount of space. Then he tries to cross out non-essential paragraphs but finds judging what is ‘non-essential’ an impossible challenge. Frustrated, he puts down the book and gazes into the distance, deep into the park. The sun is just setting, its rays are gleaming their last through the tree crowns before the entire sky turns orange. Daimyon revels in nature's beauty, wishing he would remember all of it. It fills him with a kind of energy, and he picks up the book again. Looking at the pencil sketch he drew of the doctor, he imagines it coming into the colours of nature around him. Then he writes...
- windswept hair, the colour of an oak tree's trunk
- eyes that shine with the light of the evening sun
- the grace of a breeze that moves the leaves
- the esteem of
Daimyon pauses here. He looks around: what in nature has esteem and authority? His eyes are drawn to a nearby scene, where a uniformed man scolds a couple for littering on the grass. Thus, the final line ends up being:
- the esteem of a park ranger
He is not sure what to make of this short list. It is definitely his most concise attempt yet, condensing half a page into four lines. He adds a note to the top of the page to remind himself to show Dr Morandi tomorrow, then stays awhile to watch the sunset.
————
“What do you think?” he asks with anxious excitement, sitting in his hospital bed.
Dr Morandi stands before him, notebook in hand, reading intently. “Daimyon, this is...poetry!”
“Poetry?” He expected many reactions from the doctor; this is not one of them. “But it doesn't even rhyme...”
“Poetry doesn't need to rhyme. It really is just...well, I'm no poet, but I think it really is just an artistic condensation of meaning. Which you've done excellently here. Honestly, if you just remove those dashes from the start, you could put this out as free verse poetry!” She laughs, and Daimyon laughs with her.
“I don't know, but it helps me read over everything quicker...since it's so short.”
“Of course! It might even make for stronger memories, since you can attach people's traits to things already in your implicit memory. Even if you don't call it poetry, you should keep writing in this style, if you can. It'll help you in more ways than one!”
————
Just as the doctor ordered, Daimyon starts dabbling more and more in poetry. Though it takes him a long time to get a hang of it, he eventually becomes almost as proficient writing in such a condensed fashion as he does regularly. He also researches classic and modern styles to formalise his knowledge. This newfound skill of his persists through his amnesia, allowing him to steadily fill the notebook with poems of various shapes and sizes. His favourite quickly becomes writing about people: he dedicates many to his proud parents, he sends them to his friends and even hospital staff.
The foremost subject of his emerging poetry, however, remains the person who kickstarted it. As they struggle through session after session together, Daimyon finds his notes about Dr Morandi becoming increasingly personal. One day, when he reads back the previous week's records, he realises that they sound like that of a man hopelessly enamoured with someone. The realisation is equal parts frightening and enlightening: frightening because he did not think he could ever have feelings for anyone again, and enlightening because it explains the strange feelings he gets when spending time with her. The fluttering heart, the rush in his head—there is no mistake about it. His memory might be faulty, but his physical intuition is as healthy as ever.
From that point on, he spends much of his free time and empty pages exploring the idea. He takes care not to show Dr Morandi any of it, which becomes increasingly difficult. Still he presses on, rediscovering an universal truth: love is a hell of a drug.
I didn't think I'd remain a poet.
Inspiration is fleeting.
Muses, they come and go.
What was I without them,
What was I alone?
Inspiration is fleeting.
Muses, they come and go.
What was I without them,
What was I alone?
Then, one morning, he wakes up to a familiar sound that he, regardless, cannot place. Instinctively, he reaches for his notebook to clear up the confusion, but he finds nothing on his bedside table. Panic rises quickly in him as he scrambles up from the bed, only to finally notice that he is not alone. A woman stands at the side of his bed, holding a dark red notebook. It must be his, he thinks, the only clear thought in his head at the moment.
“Daimyon. Don't panic, it's me,” the woman says, not doing his anxiety any favours. She hands him back the notebook. “Read up.”
He quickly scans through the first, then the last couple pages, reconstructing his reality.
“Doctor!” he exclaims in recognition. “W-why did you...have my notebook?”
“I read it. We have to talk.” She gets herself a chair to sit beside him. “But first, I must apologise. It wasn't right, reading into it. I realise now that you wanted to keep...some things in there private.”
Daimyon works his way backwards in the diary portion of the notebook as Dr Morandi talks, soon figuring out what she must be talking about. He feels a cold sweat run down his neck.
“They were private! Why did you read them?! I wasn't...it wasn't ready...!”
“Ready for what, Daimyon?” He sees the woman's intense expression crack as she looks away. “I...I want to hear it from you, directly.”
He knows exactly what to say: the major theme in the last several of his notes is trying to muster the courage to say it. Yet, he has never managed; now too, he feels his words get strangled in his throat. He takes a deep breath. This is not how it was supposed to go.
“I wanted to...confess,” he utters after much struggle. “Confess that I love you.”
Dr Morandi nods, then shakes her head, then both at the same time. She closes her eyes and stands up, facing away from the man, wiping her face of something.
“R-right. Then...then I have to apologise...again.” She turns back to him, only holding herself together through visible effort. “I'm really, really sorry.”
“What? Why?” A familiar, dark cloud of confusion gathers in Daimyon's mind. He frantically pores over his one solace, the notebook, but it has no answers to offer. Throwing it aside in frustration, he gets out of his bed. “You didn't...make me fall in love with you, did you? You never even showed a hint!”
Dr Morandi takes a step back. “No, but—think! You saw me more than anyone else for...it feels like months now. More than your parents, more than any other staff, every single day. P-prolonged exposure like that builds an emotional connection, it's—it's just how our brains work!” She pauses to compose herself. “The truth is, there is a limit to the amount of time one doctor can spend with an amnesiac patient. I...broke that limit. By a lot. I thought, you were improving so well, I didn't want to leave your treatment unfinished! And because of my stubbornness, you were exposed to this...torturous mix of emotions towards someone who simply cannot requite it!”
“What do you mean, cannot? What...what stands in the way?”
“Because I'm your therapist, and what you feel for me, it's...it isn't real love. It's dependent attachment; it's a survival instinct. Trust me, you're...not the first case.”
Out of everything she has just told him, somehow that last part hurts Daimyon the most. He believed, truly, that what he felt was genuine and unique; it gave him immense joy to know that even someone as defective as him could love someone with all their heart. He sinks back down on his bed, burying his face in his hands.
“I should've told you all this earlier,” Dr Morandi continues. “But I didn't want to hurt you. I never did.” She waits for Daimyon to respond, but he does not, instead quietly sobbing. It makes her heart break. Still, she presses on. “It's the unfortunate truth that as an amnesiac, you'll be a prime target for people to abuse. I didn't...intend any harm, and look how much I still managed to hurt you! Now imagine someone malicious. If they were to isolate you, they could easily prey on your emotions. Then there's your notebook—you must keep it secured at all times, because if someone takes it, you're suddenly at their mercy. I hope you can understand these.”
Daimyon finally turns to her, teary-eyed. “What now?”
“W-what do you mean, what now? I—”
“Will you leave me? Please don't leave me,” he pleads. “You...you don't have to love me, just please don't leave me. I feel...lost without you.”
“Lost? I don't think so.” She sits down next to him. “If anyone, I should've realised that you've been self-sufficient for a while now.”
“How can you say that, when I can't even remember?”
“But you can! You can hold memories for an entire day, did you realise that? For an anterograde, that's unheard of! Your note management is also fantastic. You don't need me. Far from it!”
Daimyon lets out a sad chuckle. “You taught me all of that. Poetry too, I...I would've been nothing without you.”
“Did I really? I only told you to be more concise. Poetry—that was your idea. And, my god, you are talented in it.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Yes! I've read the ones that were meant for...for me. They're beautiful.” Dr Morandi lays her hand on his, looking into his eyes with a small smile. “I don't deserve to be your muse, Daimyon. But someone else does. And the whole world deserves to see what you're capable of.”
“I'll always remember you...”
“Ha. As good as it'd make me feel, I'd rather you not. I was...well, I really was just doing my job. And now you can go on to greater things.” She lets him go and starts heading out of the room. Daimyon gets the urge to reach after her, to hold her hand for just a little longer, but he resists it. “I'll tell the hospital heads that you are as trained as you'll ever be. They'll probably discharge you tomorrow. Let your parents know.”
“Will I see you again?”
She looks back one last time. “I'll be there to say goodbye.”
With her gone, Daimyon lies back down. He feels exhausted, physically and mentally. But he does not sleep—he has too much to think about.
I carved out my own path as a poet.
But imagination—that's limitless:
A never-ending spring of joy.
When you give it enough space,
That spring becomes a lake.
But imagination—that's limitless:
A never-ending spring of joy.
When you give it enough space,
That spring becomes a lake.
Everything went as the doctor predicted. Daimyon was given the green light the next day, and his parents showed up quickly to take him home. She was there, too: cordial but professional towards the family, giving them advice going forward. The parents thanked her profusely, as did Daimyon, who battled himself throughout not to let his feelings show. He waved her goodbye when they left but did not say anything—perhaps he thought their story was not over yet.
Daimyon resumed life with his parents in Boston. He made them promise not to tell anyone about his condition, and in exchange he worked incredibly hard to conceal it from others. Even still, the first year out of the hospital was the most difficult one of his life: he had to drop out of college, into which his parents had already sunk large sums of money into. Though they assured him that his well-being was the first priority, the guilt still ate away at him, and he tried to help out with house errands and odd jobs to bring in some income. His options and abilities were limited, however, barely making a dent in his loan debt.
Poetry was what kept him afloat in this despairful year. He dedicated most of his free time to perfecting his technique and often spent days just letting his mind wander to dreamscapes and impossible worlds. He started lucid dreaming, something which his mother said he had never been capable of before. Without the means to travel the world in search of inspiration, he learned to harness it from everywhere around him, and often just rely on his imagination to guide his writing hand. Amidst these efforts, the dark red notebook quickly filled up. He bought a much thicker one to last him—with a green cover, his favourite colour—and learned to copy over and expand the essentials from his previous one: the first page, the second and third which contained a timeline of his life so far, and the People and Places sections. It took him over a week to make the transition, most of it spent in deliberation over a single entry: that of Dr Maya Morandi. He recorded her wishes, but also his feelings, making for an agonising choice. In the end, he copied the people without her and instead gave her a mention on the first page. He thought it was a fitting commemoration of her brief but life-changing impact on his life.
The next day, he forgot who Dr Maya Morandi was. Eventually, his body did too, and her name no longer brought any feeling to him. But, although he himself did not know, she still defined his first proper poem collection. Titled ‘On Heartache and Its Cures’, it comprised of several odes, rhapsodies, and other emotionally-charged pieces that dealt with the complexities of love. His father, who was the second biggest fan of his work behind his mother, pitched it to a friend of his who was a publisher. Daimyon's only objection was that he did not believe enough people would care, especially since the publisher only agreed on putting it out in exchange for a substantial payment.
For the first week after it came out, he entirely avoided the literary community. Then, as the family was having lunch together one afternoon, his father spoke up.
“So, guess what. The publisher called me today.”
“They want their money back, huh?” Daimyon asked, burying his impending sadness in hot soup.
“It sold out.”
He almost spit out his soup.
I remained a poet.
The world became my muse.
I went, I witnessed, I wrote,
And people could relate.
They saw themselves in my mirror.
The world became my muse.
I went, I witnessed, I wrote,
And people could relate.
They saw themselves in my mirror.
On Heartache and Its Cures was a tremendous success. Daimyon became known in literary circles and beyond as a rising star, which brought him acclaim, respect, and most importantly, money. Though not yet enough to get out of his debt, things suddenly looked brighter with a bestselling book under his belt. Above all, he felt validated for the massive effort it had taken him to make the collection. There were poems in there that had taken weeks to write, and every single day he had to pick them up, not remembering anything from the previous day's efforts, and continue. Before setting out to write a sophomore project, he learned how to better manage his condition. He maximised his ‘remembering time’ by sleeping as little as he could get away with. For when the reset inevitably came, he left himself specially-crafted notes in his notebook that put him right back in the mindset he had left off the day before. So engrossed was he in this effort that his second collection came to be revolved around it. ‘Reset, Repeat’ became a narrative of persistence, of overcoming and recreating the temporary. Initially he worried he had included too many hints to his amnesia, but no one managed to put them together. The now-eager publisher had themselves another success: not so literary anymore but popular, its motivational themes reaching millions.
Then, the day came when the Londe family was finally debt-free. That same day, Daimyon announced something he had planned long ago: he told his parents that he wished to move out and live on his own, and to embark on new adventures. Though tearfully, they let him go, and he moved to Minnesota. Why Minnesota? He had no idea. One day, he had found the words ‘Move to Minnesota!’ in his notes, with his distinct handwriting, squared and marked as important. No context had been given. But, by that time, he had learned to trust himself.
Daimyon Londe was in no rush. The accomplished poet sat reclining back in the comfortable backseat of the taxi. He carried a small bag with him with only the essentials: wallet, passport, notebook. There was a suitcase in the trunk—he was heading to the airport. Six years on, it was high time to make up for the missed opportunities. Plus, his grandmother was turning 75 and he would not have missed it for the world. In the idle time of the ride, he browsed on his phone, reading the reviews of his latest book, ‘The Ikoroshi Prophecies’. It was an experimental prose-and-poem hybrid about the fictional prophet Ikoroshi and his many prophecies and teachings of varying sanity. ‘Prophecies finds Daimyon Londe at his creative best,’ one review read. ‘He mixes formats and styles, sometimes mid-verse, breaking plenty of walls (fourth and otherwise) in the process. It definitely isn't his most commercial work, but those who are willing to enter the mind of Ikoroshi won't soon want to leave.’
Daimyon was about to read further when a notification popped up. He received an email.
“‘You Have Been Selected’? What is—where?” he muttered as he read the title and beyond. “The Infinity Initiative...hmm...”
It was an interesting proposal, he had to give it that. But it had to wait. The taxi rolled into airport parking; he paid and got out. As he was walking into the airport, he saw a plane flying overhead. It filled him with excitement. He was ready to fly.
I am a poet.
In disorderly lines I found meaning,
Rhymes and reason. Where there was
Memory, there is now imagination.
Where there were boundaries,
There is now Infinity.
In disorderly lines I found meaning,
Rhymes and reason. Where there was
Memory, there is now imagination.
Where there were boundaries,
There is now Infinity.
