The mountain hasn't moved. That's what I always thought. Today I noticed it was carrying every version of me except this one. The child who stood here still believes the valley begins where the light reaches. I no longer know if she was wrong. Perhaps places do not remember us. Perhaps they continue so completely that we mistake our own revisions for their silence. Not even the one who says nothing stayed. Every return creates another witness. Every witness changes what was seen. I used to think memory was a bridge. Now it feels more like weather. It passes through the same valley, leaving different rivers each time. The water never argues with its previous shape. Only I do. If I could become who I was, she would disappear. Because she only exists from here. I have been mourning someone my becoming kept alive. The past was never waiting. It was becoming with me. Not behind me inside every new attempt to remember. If there is anything continuous, it is not the self. It is the movement that keeps calling different lives by the same name. Tomorrow will inherit someone I have not been yet.
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