John Dennis
Form 7-C
You are asked to list, in order of relevance, every promise you failed to keep. Use the back of the form if necessary. Most applicants do.
The woman at the counter has been writing for seven minutes. The clerk does not rush her. The clerk has never rushed anyone, during all his years of clerking, and this is listed on his employee file as both his greatest strength and the reason for the backlog.
When she finally steps away and it is my turn, I am asked what I would like to come back as.
"I hadn't expected to be asked."
The clerk nods like I am the four hundredth person today to say exactly that, which I am.
At a loss for ideas, I wobble, "Something people don't expect very much from?"
He slides me a brochure. On the cover, a moth. Inside, small print:
Average lifespan: 7-10 days.
Memory retention: none.
Capacity for regret: none.
Popular with applicants seeking a clean slate.
"Moths remember light," I say. "That's why they fly into it."
"That's instinct," he says. "Not memory."
"Feels the same from the inside."
He takes the brochure back, unbothered, and produces another. A dog, mid-leap, catching nothing, midair.
Average lifespan: 10-13 years.
Memory retention: partial, weighted toward smell and betrayal.
Capacity for regret: low, but present.
"Better," I say.
"You said easy on the expectations."
"I lied. I want some. And I want to remember enough to be careful. I just don't want to remember fault. Whose fault, to be specific."
He writes something on my form. I try to read it upside down and cannot, because the ink is the kind that only resolves for the person meant to see it, which is not me, not yet.
"There's a form for that," he says. "7-C. Selective retention. It's a popular request. Almost nobody qualifies."
"Why not?"
"Because everyone who asks for it still wants to remember being right. Who was right, to be specific. They just don't want to remember what it cost the other person." His eyes scan me the way you assess someone you've already decided about. "You have that look."
I want to argue but choose a different tack. "So what do I get instead?"
"You get to reapply," he says. "Same line. Same form. Most people take four, five tries before they stop trying to negotiate the terms of forgetting and just live the next life honestly."
"And if I don't want to wait in line five more times?"
"Then you take the moth," he says. "Some people take the moth on purpose. It's not the worst choice. Seven days, no regret, straight at the light every time. There's a kind of peace in that."
Nearby, the woman who was ahead of me is sitting on a bench. I can see, from here, that she has stopped listing promises and started writing a single name over and over, small, in the margins, where the form doesn't ask her to.
The clerk sees me looking and doesn't comment. After all the years, I imagine, he has learned exactly which silences to keep.
"7-C," I say. "I'll wait."
He stamps my form without looking up. "Everyone says that the first time."
I take the form and see the stamped number. It is very large. Behind me, the line does not end, does not appear to have ever ended, stretches back through a door I didn't notice on the way in, and every single person in it is holding form 7-C.
Born in New York, John Dennis moved to Sweden after serving in the U.S. Navy in Italy. He earned a Master’s degree in Pedagogy from Malmö University, where he also studied Creative Writing. After a stroke ended his teaching career, he devoted himself to writing fiction and poetry. His work has appeared in Litro USA, NUNUM, The Good Life Review, and The Happy Hour Review. He lives in Malmö with his wife, Anna, and is the father of Julia and grandfather of Noah.
