you are not who you think you are
Some mornings dreams linger on your tongue strangely metallic. The events shatter at the sound of your alarm, but the memory remains in your mouth until you brush your teeth and rinse it all away.
Some nights, when you’re too tired to sleep, you’ll catch your reflection in a dark window and need a moment to recognize yourself. In the first glance something seems off--elongated, missing, or added. Then you blink, and there you are.
Some days, buried deep within your tasks for the day, you’ll catch yourself humming a song you don’t recognize. The moment you try to place it, the melody escapes you and the tune twists to whatever you’ve heard recently.
Time is wonky for everyone these days, but you stood at a window at dusk and picked out the hazy moon for only a moment, but then over an hour had passed and the sun was gone.
Sometimes you feel it--whatever it is--pressing up under your skin, rushing through your blood, beating alongside your heart, promising soon, soon, soon.
It is normal, you know, to feel displaced, to feel like you don’t belong. Other languages have words for it--nostalgia for something never experienced, yearning for a home you never had.
You spit the metallic out of your mouth those mornings and silently chant, “This is normal. This is normal. This is normal.”
Nothing is calling you home.
Plenty of people cannot remember the details of their past. We remember childhood in broad strokes, the bright moments of joy, sadness, hope, and terror. Everything runs together eventually.
Plenty of people feel alien sometimes. That’s what it means to be human.
(Sometimes, in the very early morning, between waking and dressing for the day, when the sun is a soft golden glow and you hold a warm mug with both hands and lies are harder to find, you can admit something isn’t right. The story of your life is missing a stair and you keep tripping over it and then denying it exists. In those very early hours, when the sun itself is still waking, you can ask yourself, ‘What did I run away from? What am I running away from?’ And you sip your drink and the morning remains silent, without answers).
One day you step out of the shower and notice a faint scar you don’t remember. You’re missing the story for it. And you force your eyes away. Dress. Ignore the line that doesn’t belong on your skin. It burns like lightning all day, but then you forget until, weeks later, your eyes catch on it again.
You go out for groceries and a woman’s eyes widen over her mask when she sees you. “I didn’t realize you were here, too!”
You step back. “Think you got the wrong person. Sorry.”
Her face freezes and then shatters. “Oh.” She forces a laugh and points to her mask. “It’s so hard to tell these days. Sorry to bother you.”
Her pained laugh haunts you for the rest of the day, almost impossibly familiar.
You stare into your own eyes while brushing your teeth that night, looking for secrets too lost to find.