At the corner of my bed I keep a photograph. It is labelled MY SON. I don’t remember the boy.
I remember cooking. Tomatoes stewing for hours, someone’s high laughter in the background. But not the meals.
I remember a hospital. Monitors beeping and long, blurry, agonizing conversations with doctors and nurses. Variations on the same expression, detached and sympathetic. My partner doubled over in a waiting room chair, shoulders shaking. The hiss of oxygen and compressors. The way light goes through IV tubing.
I remember papers. I needed three copies, because I kept putting the pen through the wet sheets.
I remember the breakfast, but not the wake.
I remember dark-suited figures explaining that my memories violated a law. Too many songs and TV shows and games and experiences belonging to someone else. Things we paid for but never owned. Memories that triggered those memories, because they couldn’t take the one without the other.
I remember my lawyer, just a sad face and a soft voice telling me to pay, that it would go on forever and cost too much in the end.
I don’t remember the money running out, but I remember the last time I remembered. I sat with his picture in an empty living room while my partner took everything and left to try to make a new life, to try to forget this one.
I know it’s a lot to ask, but could you spare a dollar? I just want him back for a little while.
“Blurry child sits in front of a door” by simpleinsomnia is licensed under CC BY 2.0
