Sublimation of Memory

It happened all at once.

There was no drip that went unnoticed, no gradual drain.

It was the sublimation of memory.

I woke up as normal, started my coffee as normal, brushed my teeth as normal.

But there was a shift when I looked in the mirror. It was like looking at a twin who was separated at birth. A familiar face, but no idea of the life behind it.

I put my toothbrush down; anticipated a chill of fear that never came and found my way to the couch.

I took in the surroundings and tried to piece together the puzzle that was me.

On the white walls hung pictures of unfamiliar people, smiling unfamiliar people, of me smiling with smiling unfamiliar people.

I figured this apartment was mine.

On the coffee table there was a mostly empty bottle of wine—no glass—takeout that never made it to the fridge, and an empty box of assorted chocolates.

I must have been going through something…

I turned on the TV only to be met by a melancholy melody, “Slipping through my fingers all the time, I try to capture every minute, the feeling in it—”

I fumbled with the remote and exited to the main screen to find the cast of Mamma Mia! staring back.

I found the News tab on Amazon Prime—learned I had a subscription—and left it on as myself, and the world came to terms with what happened.

It took a couple of days for experts to appear on the news.

To talk about procedural memory versus declarative memory—that’s why planes didn’t fall from the air, and cars didn’t crash into each other.

On TikTok, people talked about the solar flare being the cause of the collective amnesia; others said it was the COVID vaccine, and more still claimed it was some MKUltra gone wrong.

I continue to parse through my apartment; I’ve started putting more of myself together.

I concluded that I must be a person of halves.

Half-dead phone, half-drawn-in notebooks, half-finished novels, and photographs torn in half that I can’t, for the life of me, find the other side to.

My phone, now fully charged, chimes as a text comes through…

It’s from Alyssa.

I slide to the text; thank god for Face ID.

Hey, I know you don’t know me. Not that anyone knows anyone anymore, but I think you meant a lot to me before…there’s a lot of pictures of me with you tagged in them on here. Not to be weird or anything, I just wanted to see if you wanted to talk, maybe get coffee??

I left her on read for a while…

Sure, there’s a place I just discovered…or re-discovered. How about there?