I remember you.

I've dreamt of something like this. The sleepless nights spent staring at a blank ceiling, moments and memories replaying in my head over and over. For some reason I would always find myself replaying the good, never the bad. Never how we ended. I found the ad on craigslist. An experimental trial, to remove you from my brain like some sort of cancer, to never see or know you again. Cure myself of the memories. My heart caught in my throat when I read it, and I could hardly breathe when I sent the reply. It had been one year since I saw your face. One year since my life had changed. The nightmares never stopped.

Now I lay on this hospital bed. In a room, a room hundreds before me have been in. Hundreds before me have laid in this bed. I close my eyes. I feel as though I am standing on the edge of some great black abyss, open and howling in front of me. My hands tingling with fear, heart racing with adrenaline. My chest an open pit, black tar pouring out of me into the air. Covering my feet, my legs. I suddenly feel as though I can't breathe.

I try to look back. I try to find you again, the moments with you frozen in time, like an insect frozen in amber that I hold in my hand and inspect carefully. Turning the amber around in my hands, holding it up to the sunlight, glimmering memories come back to me.

I see the first time we held hands. I see fingertips lightly touching in the dark. I see the both of us making love in the rain on the sand dunes of Indiana, near the shores of Lake Michigan. We are standing in the dark on the side of the road in Utah, looking at the milky way for the first time. Walking into the pacific ocean for the first time with you, fog surrounding us like a heavy blanket on the cliffs of Northern California. I see the first time I told you I love you, on a carnival ride, the fireball. I see you standing across from me, a bonfire between us. I see the flames dancing in your glasses, the glow on your face. I know that you are the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. In my mind, I imagine the veins in our feet growing into the ground and finding each other through the worms and dead leaves. Our veins, tiny threads of gold in the dark.

These moments were like far away constellations in my heart, maybe if I could have connected the dots, I'd find my way back to you.

I've wanted so badly to peel back time, to go back and live in the gold again. I have nothing but the truth inside me now, black tentacles crawling up from the inside of my body, making its new home into the alveoli of my lungs. I want to hold your hands and know that they are mine, they are mine, they are mine. But I remember you, as you truly are. I know those hands, I know they are not mine.

All I have now is the truth. The truth about us, about you. The reality of my life now. The love I have spent a decade cultivating and growing in my heart. This giant overgrown fern, sprawling outwards. The love that was never real. This reality, that you were always a mirage in the desert. I was never yours, you were never mine.

This reality, I am erasing from myself. I imagine this will be like patching up holes in a wall with plaster. I imagine my life like a mural, a great white wall I've painted over time. Your section of the wall, I paint over, I patch over the holes and the cracks. This desperation, to finally forget. To finally cure myself of you.

I remembered you.

And now I don't