Salted Cereal

By Julian Denney

The cereal is salty and sour when I bite down. My gaze lingers on the jar of sugar in front of me, then moves to the salt shaker by my hand—it’s the second time I’ve done this now. It’s the third time that the milk I’ve used has been expired.

I can feel my face scrunched in appall as the rest of the bowl is poured into the trash, the taste still lingering in my mouth despite having rinsed it several times with water. It’s hard to place when I began to get such wide gaps in my memory—it’s difficult to recall something you forgot. Nonetheless, I find myself trying, scrolling through my camera roll in a mindless attempt to call back what glimpses of my days I’d lost. It’s fruitless, even as I stare at the documentary laid out before me; every photo, despite showing the moment in real-time, does nothing more than that. I can only feel the moment the picture was taken, with a graceful few seconds tacked on to either end; I took that photo at a restaurant after nearly choking on my drink, and I dropped the glass the moment the shutter closed, but the rest of the day stays hazy. I can’t even remember what the name of the place was, or who was there to laugh with me at my mishaps. It’s all obscured.

Most of my days go by in blur. I get glimpses of them sometimes, small memories that stick for no apparent reason: a ripped-up note I found under my dresser, the odd looks cast to me at a store, staring at the blinding window where the night’s snow reflected the morning sun. I keep my window shut to keep in the air of days past, in hopes that the scent may trigger a remembrance.

Even sitting here writing this, I can no longer recall what my end goal was—sitting with a carton of curdled milk and a box of cereal, I don’t know why I sat at this table, nor why I picked up the pen.