You used to smile politely when they started in again.
“Did I ever tell you about the time—”
And you’d nod, because of course they had. A hundred times.
Same pauses. Same laugh in the same spot.
Like a record that couldn’t help but play.

Sometimes you’d drift off mid-sentence,
letting their voice blur into the background—
safe, steady, always there.

You thought there’d be more time.
More repeats.
More chances to hear the same story until it lost its sharpness
and became background noise again.

But now?

Now you’d give anything to forget just enough
so that hearing it could feel new.
So that the punchline could surprise you.
So that you could sit across from them,
hands wrapped around a mug,
and say, “No, tell me again.”

They were your history.
Not just of your family,
but of the world before you were born.
They carried wars in their wrinkles.
Hard years in their bones.
And love, always love,
in the quiet ways they remembered your favorite snack,
or how you hated the sound of ticking clocks.

You didn’t realize they were an archive
until the library closed forever.

And now your memory is all that’s left.
But memory is fragile.
It forgets the shape of their hands.
It rewrites the rhythm of their voice.
It loses the small details—the ones that matter most.

You close your eyes and try to hear them.
Try to pull their voice from the static.
Try to feel their story settle over you like a warm quilt.

But the stories are fading.
And no one else remembers them quite right.

They told the same stories over and over.
And now you repeat them to the silence,
just to feel them near.