Work Text:
And it aches, the forgetting. You know there's a space that the past used to fill, but it's all only a space, now. Empty. If you poke at it, tender, it reverberates the barest sensation, like a dream, like the aftertaste of a full meal. It kisses your skin, ever lightly, paper-thin and crumbling, and then it is gone. It is gone. There is no getting it back.
There is a memory of a memory. Of what the memory feels like. You feel it like a wound. It aches, it does, and it is tender and burning in turns because you do not know what you have lost, only that you have lost it at all. Someone has dug their claws into your chest and pulled out your being, leaves and stem and root, and the tangled mess of fibers rot away in their grip. It drips of moisture and decay and you feel it marking your skin. There is scar tissue left behind.
It happens again and again. Sometimes, sometimes, you do not even notice it is gone until the absence brushes up against you like a long-beloved pet. Your dearest loved ones speak in joyful tones of shared experiences, and you nod and shudder, because you know by now that to admit your forgetting is to admit you have lost them. They look at you side-long, periphery burning, because they know by now that your silence is admission, too.
And you…
You had something to say. It is gone now, slippery and darting, and the muted frustration that wells in your chest is disproportionate for something that happens to everyone. The yawning cavern left behind has teeth, and they are eating away at the corners of your mind until you are a perfect, unobtrusive circle, with no ragged edges to catch onto.
Has it always been this way? Yes, for as long as you can remember (Ha!)—the first page in your journal has your name, in case you forget that, too, in case you forget yourself. You already have. What are we if not memories strung together by embroidery thread, stitched-together pictures of past and present? You are coming unraveled and you fear what will happen when you reach the end of the string.
It aches, the forgetting.
Maybe someday you will forget that, too.