Memories

We never really get the whole story, do we?

Not even of our own. We think we can at least recount our own point of view…but memories slip between the wrinkles in our brain. Even the brightest moments begin to fade. You forget exactly what your first love said, how he moved his mouth around the words. He’s just a softened, glowing version of himself, like an ember still dimly burning in the fire from the night before. You forget the sound of your mother’s voice ten years after her throat dried out and her bones were put in the ground. One day you’ll put down your first born child and you’ll never pick her up again…but you won’t remember what day of the week it was, what she was wearing, or if she reached her hands up, fingers curling around empty air, pleading, “Mommy, mommy, up, up!”

You forget where you got that scar and wonder if that freckle has always been there. You grasp at fleeting memories of your childhood, the thoughts you thought when you were only twenty three. You forget what it’s like to have a straight spine and soft skin. You look at your lover on your thirteenth wedding anniversary and can’t recall what you did to celebrate your fifth. You remember when you were nineteen, sitting on the floor of your dorm with your head in your hands, sobbing and sobbing, barely able to breathe. You remember that you felt hopeless, but you can’t remember why. You can’t remember how many pills you took or what you drank to keep them down. Your son will come to you with scars on his wrists, hold them up to you and say, “Mommy, mommy, I can’t keep living.” You’ll remember that you would have understood once, but you will look at him when he comes to you and you won’t see the similarities.

No, your story is written down in the sand with shaking fingers, quickly, quickly, before the tides comes up. You watch the chapters you’ve left behind slowly wash away, until you’re writing in sea foam and struggling to make water into ink.

You’ll try to write your words on your children’s bones; tell them the same stories again and again until their minds are a family tome. But they can’t remember your life while they’re scribbling down their own a mile down the same beach where you’re writing your own.

They’ll have a handful of sand to pass from you to their own children. They’ll forget the sound of your voice and how it felt to hold your hand across the street. They’ll lay you to rest and the only permanent thing will be your name carved in the stone…