Conversations with Time & Memory

Time is already in my kitchen when I walk in.

He’s leaning against the counter like he owns the late afternoon, sleeves rolled up, the familiar camel-colored coat draped over the back of a chair. The light from the window turns the sink into a small, bright plane of silver.

“You rearranged something,” he says, nodding toward the room.

“I moved the coffee maker,” I reply. “It kept splashing on the backsplash.”

Time smiles. “You always start with the practical reason.”

“What other reason is there?”

Before he can answer, a soft sound—like a page turning in another room—drifts through the space.

She appears without drama, as if she’s been here the whole time.

Memory.

Not an apparition. Not a ghost. More like a person who knows where everything used to sit and still walks that route out of habit. She wears something unremarkable—soft sweater, quiet colors—but the air around her feels textured, layered. Like she carries rooms inside her.

“You moved it because you’re tired of what that corner remembers,” she says gently.

Time tilts his head toward her, amused. “You’re early.”

“I’m always on time,” Memory says. “I just don’t always announce myself.”

I set my keys down a little too hard. “So it’s you two today.”

“Us every day,” Time says.

Memory slides into the chair at the table, the one with the faint water ring I never bother to fix. She touches the tabletop like she’s checking for a pulse.

“You keep trying to make me the villain,” she says to me, not unkindly. “As if I’m the one who enjoys the sting.”

“I don’t think you enjoy it,” I say. “But you do linger.”

Time taps the side of his mug. “I move things forward. She keeps the receipts.”

Memory lifts an eyebrow. “That’s unfair.”

“Is it?”

“I’m not a ledger,” she says. “I’m a story. And stories need shape.”

I cross my arms. “So you admit you edit.”

“Of course I do,” Memory replies. “The real moment is chaos. A hungry body, a buzzing phone, a dog barking, a half-heard sentence. You’d drown if I handed it back exactly as it was.”

Time nods. “She’s right. You think you want accuracy. What you actually want is meaning.”

“What I want,” I say, “is for the hard memories to stop feeling so close.”

Memory studies me with a softness that’s almost painful.

“Closeness isn’t always about time,” she says. “Sometimes it’s about what hasn’t been understood yet.”

Time leans forward. “Tell him the part you never say out loud.”

Memory sighs, like she’s choosing her words carefully.

“I don’t keep wounds sharp to punish you,” she says. “I keep them visible until you’re ready to change what they mean.”

I stare at the window, where the late light is slowly thinning.

“Some days,” I admit, “I step into an old moment and it feels like I’m back inside it. Same tight chest. Same helplessness.”

“That’s the doorway effect,” Time says.

“Which is?”

“You open a door with a scent, a song, a phrase,” he explains. “You walk into the old house.”

“And you forget,” Memory adds, “that you’re entering as someone new.”

I shake my head. “It doesn’t feel new.”

“Feelings are faithful,” she says gently. “But they’re not always current.”

Time’s smile is brief. “I told you—she’s a terrible historian, excellent editor.”

Memory rolls her eyes. “And you’re a decent healer, but you leave scars without context.”

“Touché.”

I can’t help a small laugh, and the laughter surprises me with how tired it is.

“So what am I supposed to do,” I ask, “when you two pull in opposite directions?”

“We’re not opposites,” Time says.

“We’re partners,” Memory corrects.

He concedes with a tilt of his head.

“Think of your life as a tapestry,” Time says. “I hand you new thread.”

“And I help you see what pattern the old thread was trying to make,” Memory adds.

“I’m not sure I like the pattern sometimes,” I say.

“You don’t have to like it,” she replies. “But you do get to reframe it.”

Time points to the coffee maker’s new place. “This is a small reframe. You changed the angle of your mornings. That changes what your future self will remember about this season.”

Memory smiles at that, almost proud.

“Do you know what people rarely realize?” she says. “A painful memory doesn’t stay painful solely because of what happened. It stays painful because you return to it alone.”

I blink. “Alone?”

“Without your present self,” she explains. “Without the wisdom you earned later. Without the compassion you didn’t have yet.”

Time’s voice softens. “That’s why revisiting can be healing. You bring reinforcements.”

I let that settle in my chest.

“So I’m shaped not just by what happened,” I say slowly, “but by the way I remember it now.”

Memory nods. “Exactly.”

Time stands, sliding his coat on.

“I should go,” he says.

“Of course you should,” Memory replies, “you always do.”

He pauses at the door and looks back at me.

“Two things,” he says. “One: nothing new grows if you only live in her house.”

Memory lifts a finger. “And two: nothing deep grows if you pretend that house never existed.”

Time smiles at her as if to say fair.

Then he looks at me again.

“Your job isn’t to pick one of us,” he says. “It’s to let us work together without turning the process into a war.”

Memory rises from the chair, smoothing her sleeves.

“And your job,” she adds quietly, “is to remember you have agency inside the remembering.”

The door clicks softly behind Time.

Memory lingers a beat longer.

“Don’t be afraid of what returns,” she says. “Just invite the present version of you to sit beside it.”

Then she’s gone too—no drama, no farewell.

Only the light on the counter shifting almost imperceptibly.

And me, in the hush of my kitchen, realizing that maybe the point isn’t to silence the past—
but to change the way it speaks to me.