I have an album of videos on my phone showing water in motion. There are rivers, lakes, oceans and waterfalls. I rock back and forth slowly as I film to hide my unsteady hand. The videos range from a few seconds to a couple minutes in length. I watch them to reset my breath. The expanse, the rhythm. My mother shows me a ‘memory’ that her phone made for her. A series of photos of my sisters and me looking younger, standing in the kitchen laughing. I am in my early twenties. My sister is pregnant. Imagine having four daughters. She looks forward to these reminders. A notification, an invitation. When we broke up I had no idea what to do with all the photos of him, all the photos of us together. They seemed impossible to delete. We were going to build a future. I kept them. I missed him. I knew I was unhappy in the relationship, but it didn’t matter any more. I wanted to take it all back. I walked into madness. I took a video of myself in a draining bath. I took a video of myself in an open robe. I kept them in an album titled ‘revelations’. The great pattern decrypted. I believed I was performing a transformation. I believed I was under divine influence. There was an evening when I felt lost. I received a notification. He appeared to me as a ‘memory’. Smiling, with arms outstretched, wearing one of my shirts. Time unraveled. I opened my photo library and selected ‘people’. A grid of recognized faces. I selected his face and mine, then clicked ‘merge’. Later that week I read that a black hole had absorbed a neutron star. In wonder and fear I understood what I had done. I knew now that I was a black hole, and he was a neutron star. I pulled him into an irreversible collision. I held my phone in my hand and let its weight bend my wrist. My delusions subside. Now I carry the residue. His face and my face, merged. I walk to the beach and take photos of disappearing things. I mark time like this during these numberless days. A tangle of seaweed which the tide will claim. A rotting fish carcass being picked apart by gulls.
You have a new memory by Deepali Gupta