Gone Tonight

by Sarah Pekkanen

I’m good at disappearing. We women do it all the time.

I see my mother every single day, which is to say I don’t truly see her at all.

How long until I’m the sole memory keeper of our life together?

Our brains form memories constantly, from the second we wake until we fall asleep. But if the moment we mentally capture doesn’t intersect with our attention, we lose the recollection forever.

They both laughed in that way only mean girls can—it’s an art, really. It combines superiority and malice with a dash of exclusivity.

I’ve always liked storms. The way the air turns thick and menacing, the static zag of lightning cracking across the sky—Mother Nature sure knows how to throw a tantrum.

Our minds do this all the time. They talk us out of things we don’t want to know.