It started with the book on my shelf that taught me how to dream and then the scratched up CD that promised it was worth it and then the bed where I lost my virginity with eyes that were red with smoke but still knew that it meant something and then the trash can that I missed when I came home after curfew with messy hair and breath that smelled of pungent mistakes I would spend the next two weeks trying to take back. 

     There is a brief moment of stillness before things change.  A horrifying, traumatizing, beautiful tranquility in which you’re caught between a force that insists on throwing you into the future and one that pathetically begs you to cling to your past. 

     It started with the book.

     You’re standing in the middle of a room where you made memories that were real- memories that gave you life and memories that were inches away from taking your life away. 

     And then the scratched up CD.

     The room starts spinning and the memories are peeling off the walls, flying out the windows into nothingness- away from you.

     And then the bed.

     So you shut the windows.  You lock the door and turn off the lights and tell yourself that if you close your eyes for long enough, the darkness will take you, too- that you’ll follow your memories into nothingness- that they can’t fly away from you. 

     And then the trash can.

     I think a part of us stays that way forever- curled in fetal position, wrapped in a blanket that feels like youth, consumed by memories that are light years of innocence away from anywhere we have left to stand.
     And where are we even standing? 

     In an empty room with walls stained by what once was and hollowed by what will never be again.  Alone, accompanied only by the eternal haunting of a question.

     Did any of it ever happen at all?