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DO YOU REMEMBER?

ah, who am i kidding

He asks you if you remember it, knowing it is a stupid question. Of course you don’t – you don’t remember anything these days. Whether it’s the work you put onto yourself or your head being its usual self; not working, forgetting pieces as the days curl over like an endlessly tired cat. Before you can answer he raises his hand and acknowledges his mistake.

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No, of course not.

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You pull yourself up to the desk and keep working. What amazes him the most is that, between all these part time jobs, you haven’t gotten fired just yet. Every time you meet him, you tell him again and again about how you forgot to do tasks at work, tasks you had done before but never quite remembered. How, every time, you pulled a miracle out of your ass and impressed the boss just enough to keep the skin on your back. Even the little things slip. Emails to send, people to call, meetings to arrange. How to spell. It all leaks out, many small cracks in many small pipes leads to a flood. It hasn’t come to that yet.

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Were you hit or something?


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You shrug. You skull aches. Maybe.

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An amnesiac?


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Not quite.


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It’s just the life of a man with a bad head. It isn’t, after all, like you have forgotten everything. There’s still fragments, enough to call that a childhood and that the intermediary between college and the ineffable blackness of adulthood. Nobody prepared you for this and it's starting to show.
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You forget what they call a kid without a dad. A kid without a mom. Shit. What was it again?
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the world changes so fast

its like someone has it out for ya, kid

Shrugging is a second language to you - once you put that down on your resume for a entry-level job at a recruitment agency. Hidden under a list of other languages you know. A friend asked you, after lamenting how languages were beyond them, how someone like you could ever remember. That was just it, you replied. For some reason you just do. Languages embed themselves into your head and stay there. 
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You didn't get the job. Didn't matter, anyway. You got a job at a bakery instead and learned how to make sweet things. Nobody really knew you were a witch. Some assumed it, some thought you were a reg. When it came down to it, sometimes you simply forgot it existed too.
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One of the girls you know - not really a friend as she keeps doing things you don't like - has something she'll never let you forget, even if you eventually do. What was it? she'll say, grinning, hand to her forehead. How many years did you flounder around after college? You beg her to shut up, there are customers around, your boss could walk in here any moment now. You're hanging by a thread but she finds it all the more reason to go on.
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How many years did you spend thinking you were 20? You forgot your graduation! 
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You wince, pull back and try to focus on getting your job done. She goes on, and on, and on, as she does.
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Did you really believe it? That as everyone got older, you stayed the same? Claimed you were 20 for two years!
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THE ONLY THING YOU KNOW

is that you spent too much time alone

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Was it the orphanage or a foster home? You shrug. It was a big building, one you walk past every day, yet still you do not know. Do the people who live there just foster an awful lot, or are they shouldering the burden of the local parentless population.
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You see a lot of kids like you hanging around the gravel yard and the over trodden green. The tree. How you climbed the tree, on hot summers, the air melting. Peach blossom sinking low in the heavy heat. Shirt clinging to skin, peeling off like orange rind. Sometimes you needed to use a bit of nail. There's still a scar on your heel where a branch went through it when you fell. 
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Do you remember the blood? There was an awful lot. People say it still stains the ground. That it hangs around longer than any memory you'll ever have. There's a blood stain on the desk at work, where you sometimes rest your wrist. Thinking about it makes your head spin, but the woman on the desk over always reminds you to move your hand. Yes, you think. That's definitely mine.
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With the days as hectic as they are, it's a wonder you find any time to sleep.