The path in front of me was dark. The only light guiding my way was the moon. The air was frozen by the howling wind.

The forest surrounding me is barren. The trees look more like abstract shapes, twisting in conflicting directions.

Whatever leaves still linger on the branches are hanging on by the smallest of threads.

Me and the leaves have that in common.

I can’t see the way I suppose I came from. I can’t remember how I got here. I must be sleepwalking through life again.

My mind lingers while my legs move forward. Out of the corner of my eye, I spot her. I think she was trying to blend into the night.

She looks like me from a long time ago. She's so young, I think. She has an innocence that radiates around her. It feels familiar, yet completely foreign at the same time.

Can there be versions of myself that still linger in this forest?

Straying from the path, I get closer to the girl. A feeling of melancholy washes over me. She feels forgotten, as if it was I who left her out here to rot.

I lock eyes with myself. I don’t say anything; I don’t have to. The light in her eyes is still there though it's beginning to dim. Soon, They will mirror what I know mine look like now.

We stand there for a while, suffocating in the angst stuck in our lungs.

I reach out to her. I know what she craves. I was once her.

Please, I beg in my mind, just let me try to fix this before you turn into me. Maybe the timeline you still live in can be healed.

The branch under my foot snaps as I raise my arms. The bolter in her takes over, and she’s gone faster than I ever remember being.

I follow her for as long as I can, the night blurring all the obstacles in my way. I smash into trees, twist my ankles on rocks, cut up and bloody, until I see what she ran to.

My legs forget how to move. She ran back to a place I haven’t had the courage to remember.

I see the memory she’s trapped in. It’s her home. It’s all she knows.

She’s forgotten I was following her as she runs up the steps.

I can’t save her, I realize. I couldn’t save myself back then. No matter how I choose to rewrite it in my mind, nothing I do now will change her fate.

I don’t want to leave her here, but there’s no other way.

I’m so sorry.