The Cost of Forgetting

I cant remember....

Do you remember the first thing you ever forgot?

Maybe it was the breakup. The one that cracked you open from the inside. You said you didn’t want to remember the sound of them leaving, the silence afterward, the way your hands trembled when you realized it was over. So you sold it. You traded the pain, thinking you were freeing yourself. You said you were tired of crying, tired of feeling. You told yourself it was just one memory. Just one.

In this city, people trade memories instead of money. Every street glows with bottled light, jars filled with laughter, first kisses, lost childhoods. People buy bread with old birthdays. They pay rent with their mothers’ voices. They smile as they sell their sorrow, and for a moment, they look lighter. For a moment, you did too.

Do you remember how it felt right after that first trade?

How peaceful it was, how easy it became to breathe? You thought you could live like that. You thought forgetting was healing. But then you started to want more. You wanted the emptiness again. You wanted the calm that came with losing pieces of yourself.

Do you remember the next thing you sold?

Maybe it was your favorite song, or the way your best friend used to say your name. Then it was the smell of rain, then your father’s face, then your own laughter. Each time it got easier. Each time you told yourself it was fine. You didn’t need those things anymore. You only needed peace.

But peace turned into hunger, didn’t it?

Now you walk the city with trembling hands, eyes darting from one stall to another. The traders smile at you. They can see it in you, the ache, the hunger. They hold up jars filled with other people’s memories, glowing softly like bait. “A sunrise over the sea,” one says. “A night of laughter with friends.” “The feeling of being loved.” They promise warmth, wholeness, meaning. You can have it, they say. Just one more trade.

Do you remember what you still have left?

You press your palms to your temples and dig through the fog in your head. There’s something there, faint and trembling, a face, maybe, a voice, a moment, but you can’t reach it. You start to panic. Your heart pounds. You don’t know what you’re losing anymore. You don’t even know what you want to keep.

Do you remember why you started?

You wanted to stop hurting. You didn’t mean to erase yourself.

Now you stand in the middle of the market, surrounded by other people’s lives glowing in glass. You open your mouth to beg, to ask for something back, but no words come. You’ve forgotten the language of memory. You’ve forgotten yourself.

Do you remember your first love? Your favorite color? Your name?

You try to scream, but nothing comes out. You try to cry, but there’s no grief left in you. Just blankness.

You have gone bankrupt.

And no one in this city will ever remember who you were.