Time’s theft

I do not remember the moment childhood ended.

There was no ceremony.

No line drawn.

Just a day—

a toy left on the floor,

a voice softened,

the hush before a storm.

And afterward—

everything slightly heavier,

the air thickened,

and the light shifted.

Photographs.

Albums stacked with toothy grins,

awkward limbs,

birthday candles that burn too fast,

faces frozen mid-laughter,

sunlight caught in hair.

And then—

nothing.

As if the camera had grown tired,

as if I no longer belonged in a world it captured.

I search the gaps.

I poke the silence.

I wonder if those years were stolen

or simply never happened.

I struggle.

Struggle to recall,

fight to remember that metal slide.

The burning of my thighs in mid-summer,

the scream of it,

half pain, half delight.

Scraped knees,

blood mingling with dirt,

the shock of pain

and the laughter that followed

wind stinging my cheeks.

And the smell of rain,

the hollow thud of basketballs

on crowded courts.

The squeak of shoes on polished floors.

The chatter of voices

behind closed doors.

I reach for it,

grab it,

pull on it.

Migraine blossoming,

nevertheless, I beg the memory to surface,

wade out from its murky water,

so I can touch the fading sensation.

All my traces of her—

fragmented.

Broken.

Half-remembered.

My memories,

when caught,

argue with themselves.

They contradict.

They refuse to stay still.

The carpet—

red?

Blue?

The voices—

present?

Absent?

I was happy.

I was lonely.

I was both.

All of it is true.

None of it is.

I recollect how days felt endless,

as if time stretched out before me—

a sky with no horizon.

Back then,

waiting for dinner felt eternal.

The blur of my parents’ voices

in the distance.

I wanted time to pause.

But it never did.

It ran forward.

It carried me with it.

As fractured as my reminiscence proves to be,

I recall how she looked at the world—

with awe stitched into every seam.

Even shadows glimmered.

Even silence rang with possibility.

Somewhere,

time stole that.

There are days when I feel it again.

A song plays—

theme music from a forgotten cartoon—

and suddenly I am her again,

bare feet on the carpet,

the world sharp and small,

brimming with delight.

But the delight is cruel,

because the sun does not wait for me,

it rises and falls,

leaving me to chase shadows.

Memory’s deception

I wanted adulthood like a shadow wants its body.

I thought it would taste like freedom,

like the stretch of the ocean.

Like salt on wet lips—

instead, it tastes like forgetting.

Like ash.

Like a breath stolen

and swallowed by silence.

Because I am not seven,

and time does not fold.

It runs forward

and the distance between then and now

is unbridgeable.

Now hours slip through me,

narrow, fast,

a current I cannot grasp.

Now, weeks vanish before I notice they’ve begun.

Childhood was expansion.

Adulthood is contraction.

The world grew smaller

even as I grew taller.

The transition was slow.

I can see it now,

how adolescence crept in like fog,

softening edges

and dulling the brightness.

Once, backyards were kingdoms.

A tree was a monument.

A rock could be a throne.

A stick could summon gods.

Now a tree is only a tree.

And a stick is only something

to trip over.

Childhood swept over me in a current.

The first crush,

awkwardly stumbling over words that meant too much.

The first time I knew rejection,

felt that pressure anchor itself into my chest.

School hallways were rivers I had to cross.

I tripped over myself,

over friends,

over strangers.

I wanted to be someone else,

someone taller,

someone braver.

I can recall the shape of my childhood grief.

Not yet the large tragedies,

but the small subtle ones:

a toy broken,

a friend moving away,

a day that ended too soon.

Grief was soft then,

but persistent.

It wrapped itself around me

like a blanket too large.

Now grief is different—

sharper.

Because when she died and I was born,

she took my memories,

and left me only with the feel of them.

I am half of myself now,

left with a husk of sensations

and warped memories.

And now grief sits beside me at the table,

in the chair,

in the pauses between words.

And it grows.

Memory’s weight

I want to grasp onto these memories,

burrow them deep within me and trap them there.

So that I can stay inside the stretch of sun,

with sweetness still melting on my tongue.

But here I am,

school uniform too small,

waiting for a bus

that will not come.

Here I am again,

watching the moment replay—

heart pounding,

a laugh shared in the cover of the slide.

They do not see me.

They only repeat what they once did.

The pavement remembers when I cannot.

I remember the first time I learned to cry alone.

The bathroom floor cold under my knees.

The sound of a dripping tap.

Remember thinking sadness had to be carried quietly.

I remember birthday parties,

with cake that was too sweet.

With friends whose names I no longer know.

Remember holding hands with my sibling,

pretending we were magical.

Remember running away from shadows

that weren’t there.

Remember wind that could slice through skin.

Remember trees leaning over fences

like they were whispering secrets.

I remember the moment I learned time was not mine to stop.

And when I wake,

the ache returns in full force.

I see the world through fractured glass.

Every memory

splintered.

Sharp edges.

I try to hold it

and it cuts me.

I yearn.

Yearn for the girl who ran too fast,

for the girl who laughed too loud,

for the girl who dreamed without measure.

She lives in fragments.

A smell.

A taste.

A song.

A flash of sunlight on a wall.

I cannot retrieve her.

I cannot hold her.

But I can carry her.

Ageing is learning.

Learning that everything is temporary.

That nothing waits.

That joy is fleeting.

That people leave.

That love changes.

And yet,

we continue.

We carry our pasts like the weight in our pockets.

We press our hands to the walls of our stolen, broken memory,

and hope the cracks let some light through.

I carry her

in the pauses between words,

in the pauses between breaths,

in the pauses between now and then.

She is bright.

She is sharp.

She is fleeting.

She is mine.

And maybe that can be enough:

to walk forward carrying echoes,

to know that every step I take

is doubled—

one for me,

one for her.

The past is not a country

I can live in.

But it is a language

I will always speak,

broken though it is.

But when I speak it,

I feel her close,

as if she were walking beside me,

barefoot,

bright-eyed,

still unafraid.