Do You Remember Me?

Emilia’s phone buzzed again. She didn’t check it. By now, the screen felt heavy with subject lines stacked one on top of another, little markers of things she was supposed to care about, but no longer did. If she opened them, she'd have to answer, and answering meant facing the mess she'd been putting off: the decisions, the conversations, the thoughts she'd pushed aside until they swelled too large to ignore.

So she walked instead, faster than she needed to. She had no plan, no direction. Just the rhythm of her shoes on the pavement, the hum of traffic, the sense that if she kept moving, she wouldn’t have to stop and face it all. The afternoon hung gray but not cold. At the corner, she slowed, her eyes catching on a park she'd usually pass without a glance. The sounds reached her first: children's voices, uncontained and bright, rising above the city's dull noise. The gate led to a small playground, where a handful of kids scattered across swings and slides, their coats half-unzipped, hair flying wild.

She paused at the entrance, telling herself it was only for a second, just long enough to catch her breath before moving on. She leaned lightly against the metal post, the air tinged with damp grass and the faint sweetness of something in bloom. One girl climbed to the top of the slide and raised her arms as though the climb itself were the prize. Another pressed a stick into the dirt, tongue caught between her teeth in concentration.

They were absorbed, utterly unselfconscious. Emilia tried to recall when she'd last felt that free. But nothing in her daily life - not her job, not her partner, not even her apartment - felt like something her heart truly craved. She was about to turn and keep walking when a girl broke from the group.

She was maybe seven, maybe eight. Her hair fell loose in shiny, big curls. Dirt smudged one knee. She ran with the kind of determination children have when they know exactly where they’re going.

Straight to her.

Emilia froze as the girl stopped just in front of her, lifting her face with steady, searching eyes. She didn’t speak. She only stood there, too close, watching as though waiting for something.

“Hi, sweetie,” Emilia said, shifting awkwardly. “Do you need anything?”

“Don’t you remember me?” she asked.

Before she could react, the girl’s small hand found hers. Warm, insistent, perfectly sure. She looked up, big brown eyes bright with something Emilia couldn’t name. The question was ridiculous. Of course, she didn’t. She had never seen this child in her life. But something in the voice, light, steady, not demanding but certain, unsettled her.

“I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else,” she said, trying gently to free her hand.

The girl tilted her head, curls bouncing lightly. She held on a moment longer, looking patient and unblinking, as if waiting for Emilia to recognize something she'd long buried. Finally, the girl let out a small breath, as though disappointed but unsurprised. She lowered herself to the edge of the sandbox where a little notebook waited, its cover smudged and bent. She picked it up and began scribbling, quick and urgent, leaning in so close her hair brushed the page.

Something in the gesture pierced Emilia. She crouched without meaning to, watching. The bent head, the biting of the lip, the furious way the pencil pressed and slid. Not familiar exactly, but close. Like a reflection caught in glass that isn’t perfectly clear.

A memory rose sharp and sudden. She could see herself again at eight years old, cross-legged on her bed, bent over a page while the sounds of the house went on around her. She was spilling everything into the only place that ever seemed to listen. She hadn’t thought of that diary in years. Not since boxing it away and, later, throwing it out. She’d told herself it was childish, too messy, too raw, full of feelings that had nowhere to go. But once it had been her world.

It was her only space free from being the polite daughter, the good student, the girl who smoothed everything over. On those pages, she'd been truly honest: lonely, angry, hopeful, wild.

Now, watching the girl, she saw that same urgency in her hand's movements, in how she bent close as if racing to capture it all before it slipped away, the urgency of a child who still believed her words mattered.

“You remind me of… long ago,” Emilia whispered, almost to herself.

The girl glanced up, eyes catching hers again. She didn’t smile. She only looked the way children look when they already know the answer and are waiting for you to admit it. Emilia wanted to say something simple, that she'd forgotten that feeling, that she'd grown up, that life had simply gone on. But the words dissolved before they reached her mouth.

For a moment, they just stayed there, woman and girl, the sounds of the playground carrying around them: a squeal from the swings, a ball bouncing against the fence, laughter breaking open and fading.

Then, as suddenly as she had appeared, the girl rose to her feet. She brushed dirt from her hands and turned toward the others. No goodbye, no explanation. She walked back into the blur of children, folding easily among them until Emilia could no longer see her.

She stayed kneeling by the sandbox long after the girl vanished. Her hands trembled softly as she rested them on her knees. Around her, the children kept playing, but something had shifted. It was as if a door had cracked open.

When she finally stood and left the park, her legs wobbled, her chest achingly full. A light rain tapped her coat, the coolness brushing her like a memory. She walked home quickly, clutching her bag against her side as if she were carrying something fragile.

Inside, the apartment was quiet, its air stale with the kind of stillness that comes from screens and routines. She set down her keys, her coat, and went directly to the drawer she had stopped opening years ago. A notebook lay at the bottom, its cover blank, its pages untouched. She sat at the table, pulled it close, and laid her hand on it. The silence pressed in.

Her lips parted before she could think. “I do remember you,” she whispered to the empty page. She opened the notebook. Slowly, with a pen that shook in her hand, she began to write. And with that, the words returned, one by one.