Memory Recedes

It's funny what you don't recall.
My mother tells me of summers of old,
of friends and fun and four-year-old lovers.
Why have I forgotten who I was as a child?
Why isn't there any resemblance
between my own two selves?
The child I once was lives or has died?
Am I another?
Did another arrive to live within me?
Were there in me several successive souls
or am I just a single inconstant being?
"You had so much fun"
my mother tells me,
smiling,
before memory recedes.