Not My Memory

A bloodcurdling scream rang through the still night. Escaped from lips of one who could not hear it.

Cloaked in sleep, the terror shown only in my parents, as they came upon my blank eyes and gaping mouth.

The weight of the day besieged me at my most vulnerable. When I lay paralyzed, uncomprehending, it sank in its fangs.

The memory would never be my own, only the retelling from the audience of the attack. Yet, as I moved through the daylight, the screams echoed within me, building to the pitch that would be unleashed into the night.

It was not caused by the lunar visions of bloodied family, nor flashes of my own demise. It was the simple, and terrifying expectations illuminated by the light of day.

While my audience would come to hear the empty space in which my screams once filled, the lost echos of them shriek within.

The memories I do not own, rumble within me, etched into the canvas of my existence.