Flash Fiction: The Day I Remembered

They say the soul doesn’t forget—it waits.
I didn’t know I’d been waiting. Not really.

I thought I was just tired. Tired in the way people are when nothing is exactly wrong, but everything feels… hollow. Like walking through your life with no sound. Like laughing on cue but forgetting the joke. I had all the right pieces—work, relationships, comfort—but there was a quiet ache inside me, like something sacred had gone missing.

I first noticed the shift on a cold morning in early spring. The world still wore winter’s breath, but there was birdsong—soft, insistent. I paused outside my front door, holding a cup of tea, and it hit me: the air smelled like beginnings. Not the kind you chase. The kind that finds you when you’re not looking.

I don’t know what made me walk barefoot into the backyard. Something old in me stirred. I stepped onto the cold earth and it was like touching something holy. My breath caught. The tea trembled in my hands.

And then I heard it.

Not with my ears, not like a voice, but like remembering a song you didn’t know you knew.
A soundless call: Come home.

I stood still. My feet rooted into the dirt, and for the first time in a long time, I felt my body—solid, alive, a vessel not just of blood and bone, but something bright. Something ancient.

Memories returned—not of this life, but before. I saw myself as light, dancing between stars. I saw a council of beings who whispered, “You’ll forget, but you’ll remember. When it’s time.” I saw Earth as more than planet—as mother, mirror, and teacher. And I saw why I came.

To love. To mend. To sing the soul back into the world.

Tears came suddenly—grief for all the years I walked asleep, and joy, too, because something had returned. Something sacred. Me.

After that, things didn’t exactly get easier—but they got truer.

I began making rituals of the ordinary. Lighting a candle in the morning and whispering, “I remember.” Sitting with trees as if they were elders. Asking my soul what it needed instead of what the world wanted from me. Some days I still forgot—but I always returned. Remembering became a rhythm.

There was no grand awakening. Just a deepening. A softening.
A choosing.

To walk the Earth not just as a person, but as a soul in a body. To be both human and holy. To make my life a temple where my soul could rest.

And now, when people ask why I’ve changed, I smile gently and say:
“I didn’t change. I remembered.”

Thank-you for reading.

Much Love and Light,

Brenda Marie Fluharty