Memory is a trickster, rewriting itself every time we recall it.

We hold onto fragments—half-real, half-imagined—until they become something else entirely.

But is longing just another kind of illusion? A shape we carve from absence, a ghost we refuse to let go?

This is for those who can’t tell if they’re missing a person, a feeling, or just the story they once told themselves.”

Maybe It Never Existed

Maybe it only began when I couldn’t have it.

I’m never clear.

All I know is now—

it’s all I have left,

clinging to a memory that might not even be mine.

A ghost of something,

like the smell of her perfume on my jumper—

fading, but never gone.

Faded Memories

My memories fade.

There’s nothing clear about them.

Partly real, partly imagined,

stitched together with inaccuracies where I need them most.

Whatever actually happened is hiding behind what I need it to be—

replaced by a hazy reality, I need more than I need to survive.

I look back at it from a different mountainside,

in a different climate,

in a different life.

The sun sets behind me,

its orange belly painting the top of whatever I once saw as green, gold.

Maybe if I pretend it was more than it was,

it’ll come back sooner.

Maybe the memory is enough to satiate me.

and maybe If it’s enough,

I’ll feel complete.

The Nature of Memory

Our memories get confused.

Our neurons fire as we experience,

like the leaves of a branch lighting up in order—

each leaf an aspect of the memory.

Normally, the most important signals light up first.

The biggest leaves on the strongest branches:

the dangers,

then the smells,

then the sounds,

then the sights.

Sometimes in that order, sometimes not.

Normally, the most important signals come first.

When we remember,

they light up again,

but the signal will never reach all the leaves again.

Over time, it skips branches.

Leaves fall and are replaced—

sometimes by new leaves,

sometimes by entirely new branches.

They light up instead.

Sometimes, we’re lighting up whole branches

that were never part of the original light show—

memories that never happened.

Spectral Light Show

There’s a spectral light show happening in my mind.

Every moment sparks a new formation,

which means another fades.

My memories won’t stop forming and forgetting.

I watch as each new impression risks the loss of an older one.

But I cling to the ones I need.

The painful ones keep me from taking the same roads.

The painful ones remind me that it was once real.

Maybe what’s left of my humanity is here,

in the echoes of what I refuse to let go.

I wonder if I just made it up.

But if I can remember it,

and it still lingers like something tangible—

does that make it real?

Does it make me real?

Truth and Longing

Truth and longing go hand in hand.

The man at the bar, retelling stories of a past that never quite happened—

the one that got away.

But what if that’s the only thing keeping the rest of the tree from falling?

A neural web formed between memories,

stitched together for survival.

A lie told enough times,

becomes its own kind of truth.

The Mechanics of Longing

Is this how longing works?

For the real and the wanted alike—

some ghost of a sensation, galvanizing over time,

rehearsed until we obsess.

What makes longing stop?

Do the neurons fray, one thread at a time, until the longing fades?

Or does something else demand attention—

a restructuring of the pathway,

a point where we finally say,

maybe I don’t want that anymore.

It hurts just to think about it.

The me of now—

with this cord still tied in my mind—

never wants to let go.

I’m scared.

I don’t want it.

And yet, I know—

None of that matters.

Maybe one day,

it will be the only thing keeping me here.

A hollowness opens inside me,

swallowing everything else.

I am choking on the cloying idea that this is it.

Webs

So what am I left with?

A mind that rearranges the past at will.

A story half-written, half-erased.

One moment, it feels solid—

a foundation beneath me,

the kind of thing I can stand on.

The light shifts,

the details blur,

and what I thought was stone

is sand slipping through my fingers.

I tell myself I know who I am,

what I’ve seen,

what I’ve lived through.

But if I can’t trust my own memories,

can I trust myself?

If my past is rewritten every time I recall it,

then who is the one doing the remembering?

Stories

Maybe all of this is the only thing holding me together.

A fragile web of neurons deciding what I was,

what I am,

what I can be.

We like to think of memory as a vault—

a place where things are stored, intact,

waiting for us to retrieve them.

But it isn’t.

It’s a river,

constantly shifting,

picking up new silt,

washing away old stones.

A song sung slightly differently each time,

until the original melody is lost.

We tell ourselves we are real,

that our past is real—

but are we anything more than stories

rehearsed until they harden into fact?

Or worse—

stories rehearsed until they

become something else entirely?

What is the difference

between a memory and a dream

that has been remembered too many times?

If I told myself the same lie

over and over again,

would it still be a lie?

Or would I make it real

just by believing in it?

The Others

What about the other side of the river?

The bank holding the memories others have of me?

Are they fading, too?

Do they sit in someone else’s mind,

warped and shifting,

reshaped by time

and need

and misremembered details?

Or am I still there,

fixed in place,

an image preserved in a way

I never even knew existed?

What if I am nothing like the person

they still believe me to be?

What if I’ve been rewritten

in someone else’s mind,

and I’ll never get to know

who I am to them now?

Maybe I have already become

something I never was.

A version of me

that only exists in their memory.

One that is clearer than I’ve ever been to myself.

Or maybe,

when I fade from my own mind,

I will still live in theirs.

Maybe that is the closest thing to permanence

that any of us ever get.

And if that’s true…

what happens when even they let go?

I Never Know

But if none of it was real,

why does it still hurt?

If it never happened,

then why does it feel like I lost something?

If I tell myself to let go,

why does my body still recoil

at the thought of forgetting?

Pain does not lie.

The body does not grieve things

that never mattered.

And yet, I sit here,

with something hollowed out inside me,

mourning something

that may have never even existed.

Tell me—

what do you call grief

for something that was never yours?

What do you call longing

for a ghost that may have been nothing

but a trick of the light?

If I am only missing an illusion,

then why does it feel like I am missing a limb?

Why does it feel like I am missing a world?

Love you loads

R

Poets Corner

As always an independent author and poet has been asked to respond to the same prompt I’m working on this week and they submit a piece without censorship or editing.
Enjoy!

Take Me Back To Breakfast

I yearn for you
Like butter for bread,
Hot water for coffee,
And bacon for eggs.

I long for you
With tears over supper,
Thinking of breakfast,
When you were my lover.

- Thomas May

Next Week - Leap

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Russ Jones

I’ve been working on something big over the last few weeks—something that brings together Fashion, Art, and Music in a way that feels urgent and necessary.

It’s not my usual way of working, but this time, the mission felt bigger than me.

I believe we’re stronger together than apart.

This is the first step in creating real change—a foundation for what’s to come in the months and years ahead.

If you connect with my work and this project resonates with you, I’d love your help in sharing it with your friends.

It allows me to keep making things that I truly believe have the power to shift the world—for me, for you, for everyone around us.

Forever in your debt.

Thank you for your support.