Fading in the Present

These days I find myself drifting into memories of my childhood.
I think of the way we used to fight for our places in our classrooms, claiming them ours as though that part of the world belonged to us, our names etched in the corner of our desks and carved in the walls of the hallways, marking our presence.
The way our voices raced to climb each other's until we felt like we were heard.

The way we crashed and burned and laughed our days away.

The way we left parts of ourselves everywhere we went, burying them under the earth for someone to find when we are gone.

And the way the mountains echoed back our names when we shouted them in the dark.

These days I find myself drifting into memories of my childhood but my thoughts keep dragging me back to the present.

I think of how no place in the world seem to belong to me now, how I hesitate before taking space, how uncertainty seems to gnaw at me.

I think of the way my voice disappears in the crowd, the way it trips and falters and then crumbles into silence;

The way I go back to the places I buried myself and dig them out with bleeding fingers and blurred eyes and set them on fire.

These days I am a burning civilization,

a shipwreck at the bottom of the ocean.

I am the ashes carried in the wind,

And the bones buried deep beneath the earth.

Long lost and already forgotten.

 Picture credits: freestocks.org