When Memories Keeps Coming Back
by Kazandra Jane M. Motin
December 5, 2025
by Kazandra Jane M. Motin
December 5, 2025
Photo by Rhaizhel Anne F. Miranda
Designed by Phoebie Faith Tañamor
There was a moment when we kept ourselves hidden from the past—
A moment we wished would vanish, like a bubble bursting in midair.
Yet life is always ironic; what we desperately want to forget
Becomes the very thing that follows us.
Always haunting. Always yearning to return.
Maybe if I could go back and rewrite what happened,
Maybe I would feel less guilty—
Maybe these memories would finally stop seeking me
And drown peacefully in the river of time.
I can’t help but feel helpless;
I was someone who got lost in a single mistake
And became a stray wandering through my own memories,
Desperate for an alternate ending.
I search for ways to forget—
To erase, to silence, to bury it all.
Yet nothing works.
It never leaves.
Maybe it never will.
It clings to the present, even though it belongs to the past.
I know it was my mistake.
But must it stay with me forever?
I am miserable.
I don’t want to be prey;
I don’t want to be hunted.
Can’t I just be a bird—
Free to fly, free to breathe, free to finally exist without chains?
I don’t want to be locked in a cage,
Gasping, hopeless, stripped of peace.
Yes, it was a mistake.
Yes, I was the protagonist of that mistake.
But I just want to feel joy again.
It’s November, for Christ’s sake—
Can I not be granted just a moment of air to breathe?
A moment to feel the season?
I am still hoping for peace.
Maybe in the coming year my mind will start to forget.
Maybe in the near future, the past that haunts me
Will find another prey and finally let me go.