Ireme

The Voice Within the Voice

Ireme didn’t speak much.

Not because she didn’t have anything to say —

but because most words weren’t strong enough to carry what she saw.

She dreamed other people’s memories.

Sometimes they bled into her own.

Last night, she saw a woman —

with Elira’s eyes,

crying over a cracked mirror

and whispering a name like it was both a prayer and a curse.

“Forgive me.”

Ireme woke up with her hands stained in grey dust,

and a word scribbled across her palm in her own handwriting:

Elira.

She had never met her.

Not yet.