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Maria-Angela Burlacu, 17 years old, is participating in the 6th International Literary Creation Competition, from Moinești, Bacău County, Romania. She is guided by Prof. Mădălina Palade, “Spiru Haret” Theoretical High School, Moinești. We are grateful for the participation and wish her success.

   Seven minutes of silence

   They say that when you die, your most cherished memories flash before your eyes for 7 minutes. But what happends when you’ve got no memories. No dreams. Nothing. Do you just go? Just like that?
   I’ve had my 7 minutes, but all I saw was pure, absolute darkness and there was nothing peacefull or comforting about mine. Not a thing. Just…darkness. Cold, absolute, and endless. For seven whole minutes, if time even means anything when you’re not alive, I drifted in a void that felt like it was swallowing me.  It was over. And then I came back. The doctors called it a miracle. They said that I was pretty much gone, that my heart stopped, but they pulled me back. “You’re one lucky girl” my mom said. Or the person that introduced to me as my mother, cause the moment I opened my eyes, I wasn’t the same person, I wasn’t ME. 
   Next thing I knew, I was brought “home”, if I can even call it that, surrounded by a bunch of people showing me pictures, telling stories, trying to help me remember…myself. Exept, everything they told me seemed strange, like I couldn’t possibly be the person they said I was. They were telling me all these great things, like I was this perfect person. But I knew that couldn’t be true, cause if it was, then why can’t I remember? The frustriation was eating me from the inside, wanting to reach the surface and say “Hey, I’m here, I remember”. But I didn’t remember. Not who I was, or who I am, not this house, not my family, nothing. 
   When I entered my room, it just felt empty. It was too quiet, too clean. The walls were white and blank, as if someone wiped them down with bleach so that you couldn’t see the soul behind it. Like a blank page, waiting for someone to put their heart on it. The only thing this room had was furniture. There was a single bed in the middle of the room, a desk and a closed. For some reason, I began rummaging through the closet, my hands pushing past forgotten coats that didn’t smell like me. The air was still, thick with a scent of dust and something older, like time itself had been sealed in with the clothes. My fingers brushed against the back of the closed, where the wood felt uneven.    Then I found it: a box, tucked away behind everything else. Wooden, worn, locked with a golden padlock. It practically hummed with silence, like it had been waiting. Waiting for me to find it.
   As I pulled the box forward, a folded piece of paper fluttered from beneath the lid. The handwriting on it was delicate, familiar.
“For when you’re ready.” 
   I stared at it, my breath caught halfway in my throat. Who had written this? Who put this here? What’s inside? Why has it hidden?  And then a colder question came: What if it had been me?
   I sat on the floor, contemplating on whether I should open the mistery box or not, so I took a deep breath and pulled the bow towards me. Everything about this made me feel uneasy, it felt dangerous. After all, I was literally holding Pandora’s box in my hands.
   Inside… glass bottles, dozens of them, each no bigger than my thumb, sealed tight with glass stoppers. Some swirled with dark fog, thick and slow like sorrow, others shone, pale gold, soft blue, blushing rose. They had a faint glow in the dim light, like they were breathing. Like fireflies were trapped in crystal. I ran my fingers over all of the bottles, and then my heart stopped at one. I didn’t even know what I was expecting to find inside, I just knew I had to open one.
   I had chosen a bright one, sky blue, pulsing gently. The moment I opened it, it hit me like a wave, and the next thing I knew, I was no longer in my room, I was kneeling in a garden. The sun was warm on my neck, my hands covered in soil. There was a laughter behind me, a boy’s voice. Turning to look towards this playful sound, my heart leapt. The boy’s face gave me this somewhat safe feeling, just a wave of relief, it was amazing. “This will bloom by the time we come back” He handed me a tiny seed and I put it in the ground, watering it. My hands just acted on their own, it was involuntary. I was there, but at the same time…I wasn’t. Then- GONE
   I gasped, the bottle slipping from my fingers. The liquid was gone, vanished. It was…a memory. It was real.  These bottles—they were mine.  Someone had put my memories in these. Bottled them. Hid them. Why? And what happens if I open a dark one?
   I was too tired to open another one that night, it felt like that memory sucked the life out of me . So I just sat. The box between my knees, the faint light of memory glowing around me like some kind of ancient, broken treasure. 
   For the first time since waking up, I didn’t feel like a stranger in my own life, but I needed answers. So the next night, I opened one of the darker bottles. Not the darkest, just one with a faint dark smoke, it pulsed slower then the others, like a heartbeat buried under water.
   The memory didn’t come in a rush this time, it unfurled slowly, like a curtain being drawn back. I saw myself—me, as I had been, standing in a dimly lit room. Not this house, somewhere else. Sterile. Cold. Machines lined the walls, glowing with the same colors as the bottles.
   And there they were, people in white coats. Calm, clinical voices. “She’s agreed to the extraction, full wipe, voluntary. Core emotional anchors go to vault retention. Ownership held by facility.”  Extraction?? Voluntary?? I had chosen this? It wasn’t taken from me? And then- another layer. I was back there, running, heart pounding, the box clutched to my chest. The memory box. What is happening? What am I doing? 
   And then it hit me. I stole them back. Before the full extraction, I managed to steal the box. Hid it in the one place no one would search. My own closet.
   I had walked into forgetting on my own terms, but I left breadcrumbs. Because some part of me knew, I might want to come back. I hadn’t been robbed, I chose this, but then… I had rebelled. The next bottle told me why. A red one, humming like a warning.
   It showed fire. Screams. A car crash. A voice shouting my name, the boy, the one from the garden, his face pale, still. Gone. He was gone. And I had lived, but I couldn’t handle it. So I chose to forget. To bottle the unbearable parts. To erase the love that became loss. To erase him. And now, I was the girl who had run from grief, but found her way back. I didn’t cry, not yet. I just sat there, surrounded by bottles, holding the pieces of a life I hadn’t been ready to remember—until now. And then I knew: the dreams weren’t just memories. They were me. My pain, my joy, my mistakes and my love, my truth. Each bottle had the power to put me back together.
   And I could choose: to keep running, or to begin, one bottle at a time, to reclaim myself. I stood up, carried the box to my room, and that night, for the first time, I dreamed. Not of the past. Not of nothing. But of a garden in bloom, and a boy’s voice, laughing in the sunlight. “You came back” he said. And I whispered “ I’m ready now”.