Morphine Ghost

I noticed it this morning in the smallest possible way. I was certain the kitchen window faced the backyard. I have watched rain collect there for years. I have stood there drinking coffee, watching the fence lean a little farther every winter. Today the window overlooks the street. It always has, according to the neighbors. There has never been a fence.

I found photographs to prove I was wrong. That should have been reassuring. Instead, the photographs disturb me more than the memory. They are too complete. Every detail is present except the one I remember. It is as though reality has been carefully edited rather than simply revealed. Nothing is missing. Everything fits. Only I have been left holding evidence for a world that no longer exists.

This has happened often enough that I have stopped arguing. I no longer ask whether I am remembering incorrectly. I ask whether the memory has been replaced. Those are different questions. The first assumes the fault is mine. The second assumes there is an author.

I have begun writing things down immediately, before they can be improved. I leave notes in books, under floorboards, behind loose bricks, anywhere I think they might escape revision. They do not. Sometimes I return to find the notes rewritten in my own handwriting. The spelling is better. The dates make more sense. Entire people disappear from entries I know I wrote about them.

The corrections are never dramatic. They are tasteful. Plausible. They remove rough edges and inconvenient contradictions. They transform impossible events into misunderstandings. They make me appear healthier than I have been in years.

That is the part I find hardest to forgive.

If these entries begin to sound coherent, if the story eventually becomes logical and complete, then whoever is reading this should understand that I did not get better.

Something else became a better editor.