The Memory I Borrowed from a Stranger

The Memory I Borrowed from a Stranger

Genre: Fiction / Poets / Surreal

It started on a Wednesday. I remember that much.

I was on the 7:42 bus, the one that smells like lukewarm coffee and regret, where passengers avoid eye contact like it’s currency. The kind of morning where silence hums louder than conversation.

That’s when he sat next to me.

A man with sand-colored hair and a frayed green coat. I only glanced at him once, enough to notice the calloused hands of someone who worked outside, and eyes that looked like they’d seen too much sky. He didn’t speak. Neither did I. But something strange happened when our shoulders touched for just a second—some tiny static jolt, like warm lightning under the skin.

He got off two stops later.

And that night, I dreamed of an orchard I’ve never been to. Rows of crooked apple trees, sunlight hanging like honey between branches. A girl was there. Maybe me. Maybe someone else. Her hands were stained red—not with blood, but crushed fruit.

When I woke up, I could still smell apples.

The next day, it happened again.

A fragment hit me in the middle of brushing my teeth: the sound of waves crashing, salt on my lips, laughter — low, familiar, not mine. I dropped my toothbrush.

I haven’t seen the ocean in years.

By Friday, I stopped pretending it wasn’t real.

The memories came faster now, as if a dam had cracked and my brain was filling with someone else’s floodwater.

I remembered:

A chipped yellow coffee mug with “World’s Okayest Mechanic” printed on it.

A dog named Spanner who liked jazz music and slept under a workbench.

The weight of a child’s hand in mine, walking across a street in October.

None of it belonged to me. And yet, I missed all of it like it had been mine once.

I did everything I could to make it stop.

I meditated. Took long walks. Deleted social media. Ate only beige food for three days.

But it was too late. I had tasted someone else’s life, and now mine was fading like fog in morning light.

It wasn’t that I didn’t know who I was. I just no longer felt certain.

One night, I remembered dying.

Not in a dramatic, cinematic way—no blood or final words. Just a quiet slipping, a dim room, a tired sigh. A hand squeezing mine. Then letting go.

I woke up sobbing, unsure why the loss felt so sharp. I checked my pulse. Still alive.

But the grief… was real.

I went back to the bus.

Same time. Same seat. I waited.

Days passed. He never returned.

But I started watching the other passengers more closely. I wondered how many memories we carried like bruises under our coats. How many of us were living stories that belonged to someone else.

Then came a new one. Not a memory—a message.

Etched into the corner of my dream one night, in shaky handwriting across a bathroom mirror:

“If you’re seeing this, you have part of me. Keep it safe.”

I awoke gasping, heart sprinting in place.

I whispered into the darkness:

“I didn’t mean to borrow it.”

But no one answered.

I stopped fighting it.

I started writing the memories down—on scraps of paper, in the margins of receipts, in the back of cereal boxes. I kept a shoebox full of someone else’s life.

The woman with the fruit-stained hands became familiar. Her name, I think, was Ellie. She used to run barefoot down hills. She loved a man who could fix anything except himself. She hummed lullabies even when she was alone.

I wept for her. I smiled for her. I missed her.

And I think… she missed herself.

Then, one morning, I found something in my mailbox.

No stamp. No return address. Just a small, hand-folded envelope.

Inside: a single Polaroid.

A blurry orchard. A little girl holding a red apple, her face half-turned toward the camera, eyes mid-laugh.

Scrawled on the back:

“You remembered her. Thank you.”

I pressed the photo to my chest. I didn't know what was happening to me. But I knew, somehow, I’d been chosen.

Not cursed. Not lost.

Just entrusted.

It’s been three months now. I still remember my own life—but I also carry Ellie’s. And maybe others. They come in fragments. Snippets. Ghosts of the everyday.

I pass strangers on the street and wonder:

Who have they forgotten?

Who do they still carry?

Sometimes I think I’m just a vessel. A notebook the universe scribbles into when stories have nowhere else to go.

Sometimes, I sit alone in the park and whisper things I was never told:

“Your hands mattered.”

“You were loved, even when you didn’t know it.”

“Someone remembers.”

The truth is, we all leave echoes.

Sometimes they land in strangers.

And sometimes… strangers listen.

So if I ever sit next to you on the bus, and you feel a strange warmth where our shoulders touch—

It’s okay.

Maybe I’m just passing along a memory

That was never mine

But was never meant to be forgotten.

Author’s Note:

Some stories aren’t written.

They’re remembered.

Even when the person who lived them

Isn’t here to tell them.