Lost/Found

They tell me I lost my mind.

Somewhere between the moons of Argos and Hotep, buried away in the freight hold, crushed between two boxes of dried proteins, I apparently went mad.

They tell me they’re relieved I’m feeling better now. That I was scaring them.

I laughed a lot, so they say. I find it hard to remember. There’s a sound I hear in my sleep, a rasping roar, the sound of twisted iron, of silences in between so loud that I think I’ve fallen into the black inkwell that is the space and then I wake up.

I think this was my laugh. But I can’t be sure.

They tell me they’re glad I’m back to my old self again. I find this phrase as confusing as the pats on my back and the sandpaper kisses that get stuck on my cheeks. They call me by a name that is not mine. But they tell me it used to be.

The thing is, I remember this old self they mention, the laugh, my name which is not my name, and the moons of Argos and Hotep as much as I remember going mad; which is not at all.

This worries me. If I was sane, and then mad, and then sane again, at least I would have some context for how I’m feeling now. But I remember being sane as much as I remember being mad. Which is not at all.

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