Shedding Memories

I stare at the sun. I’m disappointed about something. But, whatever it is, it’s long gone by now, just like every other emotion I’ve ever felt. Only bits and pieces of who I used to be stay with me.

I like mint chocolate-chip ice cream, I like being poetic, I like . . . this. Everything around me is orange and bright and vibrant, and my luminous surroundings calm my soul to the point where I forget who I am and how I got here.

The calming state my mind relishes in is like sitting in a tranquil Zen garden in Japan, my sore back resting against the base of a wide cherry blossom tree swaying in the wind. As soon as this thought enters my mind, I forget it.

I decide that what I do doesn’t matter anymore. I slip out of the cream-colored dress I am wearing and float, naked, to wherever I’m going. I’m not sure I’m moving. But I seem to be shrinking. Sinking into my own being. It is a strange sensation that is oddly satisfying to my perplexed mind.

I watch as my fingers turn to sticks. Very small sticks. I curl up inside myself, and then everything goes black.

I am nothing; I remember that I am nothing. That is all I remember. Yet it feels so good to be a blank canvas. A beeping noise startles me out of my meditation, and the sound of someone groaning.

I kick and squirm with my tiny body that I am so unfamiliar with. Something grabs my little feet and pulls me out of the black cave I had been trapped in. I open my slit eyes. The room is full of stale air and flooded with light. “Maria!” a voice calls out to me. I do not turn. I am not Maria.

“Maria!” the voice says again. I am picked up and brought to someone’s waiting arms. As I will soon learn in precisely one year, the person holding me is my mother, and I am her new child. My other life is gone.