Gaslit Memories

When I was younger, days moved softly, an endless waltz of hours beneath the cherry blossoms where I walked alone, convincing myself that solitude was sweet, that love was for the others. My footsteps in the fall, crisp and solitary, echoed through halls of laughter I dared not enter. So assured was I in my unworthiness, a specter at the feast of hearts, unseen and unseeing. Now, here, amid these whitewashed walls that hum with whispers of who should care, I sit in my assigned chair, watching pairs of old hands clasp, wondering how love sounds when it calls your name. They tell me stories of my past, lit by the flicker of doubtful memories; they paint me loved and cherished. I nod, wearing their fiction like a threadbare coat in a winter that I’ve claimed too long as mine. It’s easier to believe in this curated past, where phantom kisses mark my cheek, and phantoms of embraces wrap me in warmth I never felt—each lie a balm to the soul I doubted. Night falls heavy here, and in the quiet, I hear the young man I once was, whispering through the crackling static of years, how he wished to be proved wrong, yet never dared to ask. What ghosts will they say loved me, when I am gone, my seat left cool and empty? Will they speak of me as one beloved, or will they know the truth—that I believed in neither them nor me? Oh, to have lived differently, unafraid of my own heart, to have walked into the noise and found my reflection in eyes not my own, learning too late that I was worthy, always worthy, of the love I denied myself.