You are hopeful but you have lost all hope. You love the stars because they make the dark seem even more shadowed. You hate the taste of salt because it reminds you of tears. The smell of spring - pollen and grass and sweet flowers, makes you sick to your stomach. When you wake up, you touch your shoulder like your mother used to do. It doesn’t feel the same, but you do it anyway. Its phantom touch is as close as you dare get to your past.

When you go downstairs for breakfast, your cat winds around your legs, her mangy fur brushing against your ankles. You pour food into her bowl and close your eyes because the stream of movement reminds you of the river where you used to live. You hate your cat and you love her too. She is the last part of your old life. Her green eyes haunt your dreams and your waking hours – unlike the gray ones. Those stay behind closed eyes. Those are easier to banish when you wake up. But your cat, she makes you remember.

You never eat eggs since that was once your favorite food and it tastes of memories. Instead, you spoon sour yogurt past your lips and drop the bowl in the sink. You’ll clean it when you get back inside, you convince yourself, even though you know you won’t. There’s a pile of dishes slowly looming beneath the tap.

When you open the door, the sun hurts your eyes, and you decide you hate the daytime. You have always loved the dark, you force yourself to think, even though it’s a lie. When you were little, your parents would leave the hallway light on and you would sneak out to sit with them so that the darkness would stay away a little longer. You were always afraid that the dark would take you away - steal you from your family. You should have been afraid it would take them from you.

Your bare feet are hot against the dewy grass, and the water soaks through your skin, worming its way into your mind and dragging up voices. Eyes; green and gray and bright. Smiles so sweet you can’t fathom their innocence. A girl with an infectious smile. A sister. A famil-

No. You don’t remember anything. You don’t feel anything but damp ice against the bottoms of your feet and burning sun against your temples.

You block out the memories of families and friends. You are alone; you command your mind to believe, you have always been alone. You have never known sweet roses and warm cakes. You have never known honest smiles and quiet laughs.

You fear the past and curl away from the future. The present terrifies you. You love books because they help you forget. You hate roses because they smell like your sister. You like the night because in the day, you see too much.

You will never read this. Or if you do, you will stop before the second line. You do not want to linger on pain – you say that life is endurance.

But you are not enduring. You are forgetting, and no one is left to remind you.

Not even me.