Thermal Ghost

Dear Delyara, I emptied my pockets onto the table tonight and found a crumpled receipt from a petrol station dated three months ago. The thermal ink had faded so badly it looked like a ghost of a transaction—just a faint gray blur where the total should be. We carry these tiny slips of paper around like evidence of our movements, but the chemistry of the paper is designed to forget the details faster than our own memory does.