capsules

my mind is shifting all of the time and i don't even know what it's being filled with. i can remember what i had for dinner yesterday perfectly, the way the taco bell bag crumpled, the way i squirted the hot sauce a bit too much it got on my desk, and the crisp starry drink.

i wonder what memory was deleted to remember that just one dinner. was it something from my childhood? maybe the memory of my dad teaching me how to ride a bike is getting a bit blurrier than it was before. maybe i'm misremembering the route we took - if we started to go towards the left side of the street after the driveway or maybe the right. my gut says the right but i'm sure my dad will say the left.

i wonder how much my brain truly remembers things. i think about high school a lot and you'd think i'd remember more of it. you’d think i’d remember the locker code combinations, how hard we'd laugh at whatever meme was going around, and all of the latest gossip we somehow always knew.

i get scared of losing memories i care about when i'm older. maybe i'm stupid and should have journaled more. should have actually kept up instead of just trying, getting frustrated, and throwing away the entire journal.

the thought of throwing something with so many memories inside of it is terrifying, this time capsule i was completely unaware of sitting in some landfill probably sitting next to a pizza hut box and old condoms. it's just stuck there forever with no way to retrieve it.

i try replaying my favorite memories over and over in my head so that i can remember them. i try to think about the breeze when we'd walk together, the way the pavement sounded when our shoes stepped on it, and the cold dr peppers we always clanked together.

sitting in my apartment over a decade later, i worry that those memories are fake somehow. that i'm misremembering what actually happened. there's nothing i want more than to close my eyes and find them exactly as they were. i'm just not sure i can trust what i'd see.