Remembering You by kmarie

This story is part of the Make it Bitter or Make it Better Writing Challenge, where we invited writers to explore the storytelling possibilities of a simple situation. We gave authors free reign to interpret the prompt as they see fit, provided that they give their story a clear ending.

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TITLE: Remembering You

I write the date down three times to make sure it stays.

April 13th, 2026.

April 13th.

4/13/26.

The ink looks unfamiliar in my own handwriting.

I can’t remember why today is important. Only that it is. There’s a weight to it, like a word resting on the tip of my tongue.

I lie in bed a little longer before getting up to make breakfast. French toast and luncheon meat. I pour a half-glass of cold brew. I don’t remember when I started drinking coffee. I used to buy milk by the carton because I couldn’t handle caffeine. The glass sweats beside my plate. I take a sip anyway.

I can’t finish the food. I’m not full. I just don’t want to eat alone.

Have I always lived alone?

Have I always been lonely?

Have I always been unhappy?

There are framed photographs around the house. I haven’t turned them face down. I just don’t recognize everyone in them. If I concentrate hard enough, I feel like something might surface.

I decided to tidy the house. I opened the cupboard twice before finding the mugs. They’re where they’ve always been.

I think.

I can cook, clean, do laundry — but I still can’t fold clothes. Everything in my closet is tossed in like surrender. I turn on La La Land for background noise. I don’t know why this movie comforts me. I don’t remember choosing it. It just feels familiar, like a song I almost know the lyrics to.

I try on old outfits and pose in front of the mirror like a constipated model. I laugh at myself. My knees ache — probably from that motorcycle accident years ago. The mirror reflects a woman who looks like my mother. I hate it.

I almost don’t recognize her.

It’s nearly sunset when I realize I haven’t finished a single chore.

I open the bottom drawer and find boxes I don’t remember placing there. Inside the first was polaroids, dried flowers, a golf ball, a key, and some letters.

My chest tightens.

Something shifts.

We looked beautiful together.

That’s the first clear thought I’ve had all day.

I sit on the floor and open the oldest letter.

“I love you beyond reason — it’s illogical.

I can’t make it make sense, and I’m okay with that.”

We were romantics. The kind of people who wrote poems when everyone else tried not to feel too much. We loved each other. I don’t think I ever stopped — I just forgot.

“You think you’re a pawn. I disagree. But even if you are, I’d keep losing my queen in chess if it meant keeping you safe.”

A memory returns in fragments.

The first time I saw you, my world narrowed. Everything blurred except your face. You looked like something I had once prayed for. Like a picture I described to God in detail. I couldn't help but stare, I could imagine Apollo being jealous of you. You looked like you were modeled from my imagination, like you were everything I asked for. It's funny how vivid that memory is to me, it's like a flashback just from yesterday.

Months later, you told me you felt it too — that the world had stopped.

A few months after we started dating, you told me about that encounter. You said we had stared at each other, that your world had stopped. I laughed and denied it. I didn’t want you to know how much I really liked you. Deep down, I knew it was fate. We were meant to meet.

We believed in fate then.

I opened another letter. The one from our third anniversary.

“Your face is a celestial dawn I wished only I would stay awake to see.”

What happened to us?

One envelope remains sealed. My fingers tremble before I open it.

Before I can, our last fight surfaces.

You said you were tired. I said I was tired too.

Anger is easier to remember than tenderness.

I screamed—how could you be tired when I was the one trying to understand?

You screamed back because I was being childish.

I screamed again and said I was sorry I couldn’t be as mature as your ex.

You said you were done. I said fine. I was done too. I was tired too. You said I was always complaining about the same damn thing, and I said you were always complaining that I was always complaining about the same damn thing. We cursed each other. You stormed off, and I followed you to the elevator to scream again. We were too angry.

It wasn’t a pretty ending for a beautiful beginning.

I break the seal.

Meet me at our favorite café on April 13th.

That’s all.

April 13th.

The date presses against my ribs.

Looking back at it now, I still think you were wrong, but I wonder, if you just did something about it, would we have ended still? 

The answer, yes. Another memory rushed in. I wanted to get married, you didn't. It was probably what made me more insecure back then. Was I really not the type that you would marry? Was I lacking? 

We argued about her. We argued about marriage. We argued until love became something we defended instead of something we felt.

I hail a cab. The café is gone. A hardware store stands in its place. The hardware owner tells me they bought the place when the café owner passed away five years ago.  

Did you marry? Did you have a family? Was I just someone you didn't want to marry? Lots of questions are running in my head. Something about that feels like I've been stabbed.

I tried logging into Facebook to search for your profile. I don’t remember my password. I don’t remember the email.

The next morning, in a different box of old journals, I found the password written down. It’s your name spelled backwards.

I searched you up.

No posts.

I don’t know what I expected.

I opened another old journal—this one from after we broke up. This is ruining me. Remembering everything again is like reliving our entire journey. This time, maybe you’d be ready, or maybe I’d finally have the answers I needed before. I figure there’s no harm in paying you a visit at your old house. I take a bath and put on my best dress. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. I keep repeating it to myself, because I remember always forgetting how to breathe when you were near me.

I stand at your front door contemplating if I'm doing the right thing. I look around, your old house looks the same.

A woman answers the door.

“Katherine?” she asks.

I nod. I asked where you are. 

"You don't know?" 

"I don't know what?"

"He passed away five years ago." The air leaves my lungs. I had to sit down, I could hear my heart breaking, I could feel my world collapsing.

“You know he waited for you in that café,” she says. “He bought it. He was going to propose.”

I stare at her. “What are you talking about? He didn’t want to marry.”

“People are allowed to change their minds.”

She brings me a box and says I should open it at home. It was your box of sentiments.

Inside are the letters I wrote you, photos of me eating sushi — I used to hate sushi — a key, and another unopened envelope identical to the one that I just opened yesterday.

It’s a letter you never sent.

“You weren’t in the café. I figured you didn’t want anything to do with me anymore. That will be my last attempt. I don’t want to force you to stay. I will wait for you. That way, when you come back to me, it will be because you want to.

I won’t mail this. I want you to read it with me once you’re back in my arms.”

I sit on the edge of my bed and read it three times. Thirty years too late. I left the country after we broke up. I cut everyone off. I thought distance would erase you—and it did. I just don’t remember how long it took.

There was a quote I loved in high school: "Of all the ways to lose a person, death is the kindest."

How cruel the world must be that I had to lose you twice—first, when we broke up, and then second, when death took you without me. 

The caretaker said you didn't marry. I didn't too. I guess while trying to forget you, I forgot about the part that I had to unlove you, and that I had to unlove even the future I imagined for us too. I also forgot to take my heart back with me when I left you.

April 13th was our anniversary. 

You loved cold brew.

You cooked French toast for me on Sundays.

You made me watch La La Land and pulled me into the middle of the living room to dance.

You made me realize my love for sushi.

There’s a Naruto box set under my TV. I don’t even like anime.

There’s a Pokémon pin in my jewelry case. I was never a fan.

How I Met Your Mother feels painfully familiar.

There are pieces of you everywhere. I just didn’t know it was all you. I loved you so much that even the smallest parts of you—your music, your habits, your laughter—had woven themselves into me. For years, I didn’t realize I had carried you with me in every familiar song, every silly collectible, every ritual I thought was mine alone. I loved you too much that I left everything and everyone behind just so I could forget.

There’s a knock at the door.

“Hey, Mom.” I thought I heard him call me mom. Did he? I frowned, showing my confusion. He looks familiar in the way strangers sometimes do. He faked a laugh and said, "You don't remember me, do you? Have you taken your meds?" I didn't answer.

“You adopted me,” he says, showing me pictures. I looked happy. I looked like a good mother.

“Yesterday was hard, wasn’t it?”

“Yesterday?”

He glances at the calendar.

April 13th.

“You found the letters again,” he says.

Again?

He kneels in front of me like I might fall.

“You always remember him on this day,” he says gently. “And then you don’t.”

The cold brew sweats on the table. “I don’t even like coffee,” I whisper.

“The doctor said it would happen like this,” he says. “Dates first.”

For one merciful second, everything returns — the café, the proposal, the way you looked at me like I was sunrise.

Then it fades.

My son catches the letters before they slip from my hands.

Outside, the light tilts toward evening. 

I look at the calendar again.

April 14th, 2026. 

I should write it down.

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