memory is not a photograph,
not a keepsake tucked in the back of a drawer.
it is water against stone,
wearing away, reshaping,
turning sharp edges into something smooth,
something unrecognizable.
i do not trust it.
it lies in soft whispers,
changing names, shifting colors,
blurring what was sharp, sharpening what was dull,
twisting the past into something that never was.
but forgetting is no mercy either.
i try to let go,
but memory is a house i still live in,
one with doors that do not lock,
windows that do not shut,
ghosts that refuse to move on.
every corner of this house is haunted,
rewritten and forever rearranged,
like when you called me beautiful,
and i had tears in my eyes,
you kept saying it and i didn’t believe it,
or did that even happen at all?
so i stay,
trapped between remembering and forgetting,
watching the walls crumble
as the echoes rewrite themselves.