Lies Of Memory

I sat on the chair with the pictures of my childhood and my younger days.

I looked at them for a long time, as if they were telling me the story of each moment.

They gave me great joy and peace of mind.

When I was a child, I had a beautiful family, a loving mother, a supportive father, and a caring sister.

This picture here shows me playing with wet soil after a rain, some of it on my face.

It is our garden.

It still looks the same today, refreshing and calm.

This is me with my three friends, bags on our backs, my hands on their shoulders and theirs on mine.

The next one is one of the most important phases of my life: my wedding.

Here we are holding flowers and laughing.

You can see those three friends in the back, too.

There are so many pictures.

They are my only memories.

This one is recent, I’m chatting with our neighbour, and my wife took the picture from our room.

I haven’t met my friends for a long time now.

My parents are no more.

My wife, too, has left us.

But they were all peaceful in their last moments.

Now, only my sister and I live here.

And I don’t have much time left either.

I’ve been having dreams where I am crying and screaming as a baby.

Other nights, I’m alone at school, sometimes bullied.

Sometimes I see my to-be wife leaving me and marrying someone else.

As I said earlier, photos are my only memories.

Though I have some memories of my own, they aren’t pleasant.

They are about my traumatised childhood, how my sister and I survived this cruel world without parents,

how she sacrificed so much for me, how my only love abandoned me.

But these are just the effects of old age and bad dreams.

They must be fake memories.

On my deathbed, my sister sat beside me.

I asked her, “Are those real?”

She cried, tears running down her face.

She said, “But you were happy, at least.”