Imagine it: a bullet that takes out memory. A man is gunned till he remembers nothing of grief. The city's sorrows will leak out and pool into a lake at the edge of a place beyond casual wander. And no one shall remember it; no one. A woman shoots a man, and another man shoots her in that revival against the eternity of trauma, and the last person standing in the chain of fire will be Hemingway. He'll shoot himself and they will wonder why he wouldn't wake up after the cleansing, then name a religion after the mystery.
 
And there will be people trying to use science to rediscover the loss. The void will not be visible, no. But scientists will always be busybodies; experimenting the societal class cages, suspecting the pandemic of happiness. But the majority of them will be believers. Guns will be crucifixes but cemeteries will remain holy temples. And in discotheques they will lift the lips of their wounds high and pray to the spirit of Hemingway. It will rain pills and flower weeds in that city of high humans, minds ever suspended in mirth like the planets orbiting the amnesia star as a sign of transcendence. A miracle. Memory is vanquished, and trauma flowed into extinction. But is the victory sustainable? 

And the day of relapses shall come with its smithereens: a black boy running out of a dream that chased him with holy things, a woman's body remembering the aches hidden in the backend of her ancestry, and a drunk man whose fists kept thrumming war songs. They will fret and believe what they saw are visions of future, the revelation of time sealing the painful clots of the memories and the judgement for those who resist the glee, those who gave their time unto unfruitful pondering after the mysteries. The rapture of remembering will open the persecution of the scientists. Oh! What laboratory will not burn? And just like that, trauma is reborn.

About the author:

Simbo, Olumide Manuel came from a line of firsts: that is, the first son of the first son of a first son and the first son of a first daughter of a first daughter. He reaps all that stress into his lean body and sleeps like a cat. When he’s not sleeping, he is binging romcom Kdramas, reading (for appearance’s sake), or retweeting @Olu_midemanuel.

Photo by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash