The Memory That Wasn't Mine

I was brushing my teeth when it hit me.

This smell.
This exact light through the blinds.
This song—playing faintly through the neighbor’s wall.

And suddenly, I remembered being ten years old.
Wearing corduroy pants that didn’t fit.
Holding a frog I swore was magic.
Telling someone named Lydia that I’d protect her forever.
Even if the sky peeled off.

Only…
I’ve never owned corduroy.
I don’t know any Lydias.
And I grew up in an apartment five floors above where frogs fear to tread.

Still, the memory was sharp.
Like it had been sitting in my spine this whole time.
Like my bones remembered it before my mind could.

I googled the neighborhood.
There was a Lydia.
She died in 1996.
I was four.
We’d never met.
But her obituary mentioned frogs.
And promises.
And a boy no one could identify.

So now I wonder…

Did I dream it?
Did I time-slip?
Or was my head just a vacant room something else passed through?

I don’t want it gone.
Even if it’s not mine.

It felt like being haunted backwards.
Like nostalgia for someone else’s unfinished sentence.

And I’ll be honest—
part of me hopes Lydia’s out there
still waiting for the sky to peel
and for someone to keep their word.

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