Shards of Remembering

The memory doesn’t arrive whole.
It limps in, fractured,
like glass scattered across the ocean floor—
sharp enough to catch the sun,
dangerous to touch,
yet impossible to ignore.

First, I see the meadow:
tall grass bending under a heavy wind,
a horizon breathing fire.
The light is too bright,
the shadows too long—
as if the scene were painted
by a hand that never finished the work.

Then comes your voice.
Not the voice itself,
but the ghost of it,
a syllable half-born,
a laugh cut short,
like smoke curling through an open window.

Did it happen this way?
Memory doesn’t ask permission.
It builds its own architecture,
stitching pieces together
until even the lies feel true.

One moment you are alive,
your hands pressed against the sky,
shaping clouds into animals.
The next, I’m alone,
clutching the outline of your shadow,
the echo of your name
breaking like waves against the walls of my skull.

I bleed each time I reach for it,
but still I reach—
because forgetting feels worse
than any wound remembering can carve.

And maybe that’s the curse of memory:
it keeps us tethered to ghosts,
forces us to rehearse
what cannot be undone,
what should have dissolved with time
but never does.

So I keep gathering shards,
even as they cut deeper—
because even a broken memory
is better than the silence
that waits without it.