Sometimes my mind drifts backward at night. Not to anything dramatic, just small pieces of my life that float to the surface for no real reason. Old hallways from school, the smell of a classroom printer, the way the streetlights looked on the ride home. None of it is important, but it still lingers like it wants to be remembered.
I think memories stay soft on purpose. They blur a little so they hurt less, or maybe so they feel warmer. Either way, this fragment belongs to the part of my mind that reaches for the past even when I am trying to move forward.