It feels like a dream I forgot to forget.

That part of my life.
It no longer feels like mine.

Not fully.
Not in the way memories usually do.

Like something I woke from
but still remember in my body.

Like something I recall
but no longer exists.

I remember the feeling.
I remember how loud it was
in my chest.

But when I try to speak it,
I wouldn’t know who to tell—
not without it sounding like fiction.

So I keep it locked
in the farthest part of my mind.
A room with no space and no light.

A place where I store
what I can’t afford
to feel again.

I don’t bother visiting it.
I don’t call it by name.

But it happened.
It was mine.
It was real.
As real as anything I live now.

And yet,
now it feels too far
to belong to me.

Too vivid to be a lie.
Too distant to still be true.

A misplaced memory
and outlier in my timeline.

Too real.
Too strange.
Too unreal
for something I once swore was mine.