Glass Puzzle.
She has a memory, or at least she thinks she does.
It comes to her as pictures—like the postcard he holds up to her eyes. Painted seas, golden dunes, sky-blue faded into static. If she focuses, if she wills it hard enough, the horizon might spill out over the edges of the card, might stretch across the walls, might become real.
But it doesn’t.
“You were there” he tells her, “You remember.”
She wants to believe him. She wants to say yes, I remember the warmth of the sand, the way the water lapped across my ankles, the smell of salt and heat. She wants to say, yes, I remember the day you took this photo, how we laughed when the wind stole my hat, how the waves pulled our footprints away like they had never been there at all.
Instead, she says nothing. The puzzle won’t fit together. The glass of her mind is cracked, reflecting things that may not be true. She reaches up, almost touches the postcard, but stops.
He is still holding it.
He wants her to be someone she cannot find.
“I remember,” she lies.
And the picture stays in place.
Photo credit: Mary Simpson
