I’ve decided to blame you for the warped time machine I find myself flailing through.
It’s been four years, and I guess I decided that you’re at fault for the way they have passed like water slipping through the cracks between my hands and a million other cliches.
It’s not your fault, really. But in the summer after you, I realized that it was easier to personify a date and blame some nonexistent curse placed on me for time passing too quickly. It’s easier to pretend that you’ve put me under a spell because at least that’s something I can break; at least that’s something escapable.
I desperately long to free myself from the ever-accelerating ticking of the second hand on my clock, so instead of facing the reality of the earth eternally rotating on its axis and my body forever launching itself through the years, I look back to you.
You sit and stare at me, a malicious glint in your knowing eyes. I’m sure that you knew what you were doing; I’m sure you knew that nothing would ever be the same after you.
No, now I’m sure that you placed a spell on me that day. I know that I have been under a curse, I must have been.
I know that’s what happened because the last thing I remember is talking to my friends in my sixth-grade classroom. I must have been cursed by you because I’ve been blacked out for four years, and I’m just waking up now. I know I’ve been under a spell because there’s no other explanation for the way that my life has expanded and contracted without my control, the way I have been shoved through almost half a decade of history and not remembered a single moment of any of it.
I know you cursed me because I don’t remember a single moment of any of it.
I don’t remember a single moment of it.
I don’t remember.
Too much time has passed and I’ve forgotten it all and it’s your fault and I’m angry.
But that’s not really true.
I do remember.
I remember the bike rides first, and sitting on her lawn. Ice cream, running, talking. We talked about everything and nothing, and, I maybe, I don’t remember every word spoken, but those months are preserved in the spaces between pages of the books we fell in love with together.
I remember that, so maybe the curse is breaking?
I can remember more if I try.
I remember that next school year. The world is still crying out in pain, but we’re healing slowly, so very slowly. Through “mask breaks” during class and sixth-hour social studies, pink-highlighter-dyed hair, and communicating over email, I was healing. My world was being rebuilt.
I remember all of that and I remember so much more.
And yes, some parts are forgotten, but that’s inevitable, with or without your curse. Still, I remember the years since you in broken flute music, bright laughter, and the voices of all the new people I’ve met and loved.
You never took any of that from me. Maybe you were never trying to, but I’d rather pretend you were than have to grieve the memories lost and spend my days worrying about everything I’ll never remember.
But I do remember. I remember so much and I’m escaping. I’m free. I am swimming in all the life I have lived since you, and I have finally broken the curse.
