The Glass Orchard

Some worlds remember. Even when you don't.

I don't remember my dreams.

I haven't in years - not since I was a child, not since long before I became the woman standing on the edge of a psychiatry degree, a hard-won adoption, and a life I built entirely on my own terms.

But something remembers me.

It starts small.

A reflection a heartbeat too slow.

A flower blooming through solid concrete, gone without a trace by morning.

A silence where the birds should be.

I have a clinical word for almost everything. None of them explain why my mirror keeps fogging from the other side.

Or why I keep catching glimpses of a man who looks at me like I've ruined his life.

He watches me through every pane of glass.

He knows my name.

He smiles when I finally notice him.

And with every passing day, he grows a little closer.

He says I've forgotten him.

He says I promised I'd come back.

He says he's been waiting one hundred and fifty years.

I don't know who he is.

I don't remember making promises to monsters.

But the closer he gets, the more impossible it becomes to believe I've never loved him before.