The Forest Of Forgetting

I don’t remember my name. The forest took it—like it takes everything else. Every step deeper erases another memory, another piece of who I was. But I keep walking because there’s a voice calling me, faint beneath the rustling leaves, singing a lullaby only someone from my past could know. The elders say no one returns from the heartwood. But if I forget everyone I’ve loved… what’s left to go back to?

The Forest Of Forgetting

I don’t remember my name. The forest took it—like it takes everything else. Every step deeper erases another memory, another piece of who I was. But I keep walking because there’s a voice calling me, faint beneath the rustling leaves, singing a lullaby only someone from my past could know. The elders say no one returns from the heartwood. But if I forget everyone I’ve loved… what’s left to go back to?

I wake on moss so thick it feels like sinking. My hands are scraped, my coat torn at the shoulder, and I don’t know how I got here. The trees loom with bark like cracked skin, pulsing faintly in the dim light. I find a note in my pocket, written in my own hand: 'Trust nothing that remembers your name.'

A giggle echoes—childlike, familiar. I turn and see a girl standing between the trunks, wearing my sister’s dress. She smiles, but her eyes are hollow. 'You shouldn’t have come back,' she says. 'You always forget by morning.'

I take a step toward her, but the ground shifts. Roots coil at my ankles. The real question isn’t who she is—it’s whether I want to know.