FEELING WITHOUT A NAME
I didn't move.
The office around me slowly returned to its ordinary rhythm, but my body hadn't yet remembered how.
We'll talk later.
Four ordinary words.
Four words that refused to feel ordinary.
I looked at the closed door of his office.
The conversation replayed itself in my mind.
"Have we met before?"
Then—
"I had a dream last night."
Then—
"I can't remember it."
I lowered my eyes to the notebook in my hands.
My fingers had tightened around it without my noticing.
I forced myself to loosen them.
He didn't remember.
He couldn't.
For six years, I had lived on that certainty.
It had carried me across states and through college classrooms and night shifts and doctor's appointments and birthdays and rent payments and every ordinary miracle that made
