8

I feel as though I have lived a number of lifetimes already and the memories I have are from past lives that I am not meant to remember. These memories do not feel as though they belong to me. It is as if I read these stories in a book or saw them on a movie screen and incorporated them into my subconscious only the be replayed in my sleep. Each era of my life falls away into a deeper, darker and dustier corner of the library in my mind as it stretches to make room for new chapters within new volumes. I have evidence of these memories everywhere: on my skin, in my eyes, in my dreams, on my walls - everywhere... but they feel more like trinkets someone left behind when they moved away which I had accidentally discovered when I moved in. The people I knew once upon a time in a far away place - they still exist. They still breathe and eat and love and smile and cry . But, in truth, they are like characters in a novel I knew intimately for 250 pages or a for 120 minutes in a theater somewhere. And these flickering moments in which we were together pass by once in a while as a montage and I have to stop and determine if it really happened.

I asked myself when I shut his book and stored it on the shelf whether he would incur the same fate as the rest; whether or not the anger would grow stale after the love went rancid. I wondered how long before the pages would turn yellow and brittle. When would I open it back up to reference a moment in time and would I hear the binding crack from age? How often would I pass him by pretending to ignore it before I would ultimately forget him and he would be relegated to fiction. After spending years dedicating this work to him, I do not think I can recall the ring of his laugh or the tone of his voice. Slowly, I begin to forget why. After why goes how. After how goes, what and when depart together. Who, however, takes the longest to shake from memory. Even if the details are obscured by time, a blurred image will always be able to sustain itself in memory as emblematic of someone somewhere some time ago with which something happened. But the hot coal of wrath lingers long enough within, casting terrible shadows on a face I thought I knew so well. Eventually, it will be like ancient countries warring over a blood feud long since forgotten but the passion and the anger remains even if the reason is made irrelevant with the passage of time.