Nostalgia Meets an Imagined Future

Wrote this a while back. I always always always have these sort of thoughts and I think this was the first piece that I put those ideas into words.

I woke up with a mouthful of sand and a sunburned back to the intensifying sound of the smack of a volleyball. I remember feeling suddenly so tired that I just fell to my knees and plopped to the sand like it was a mattress that shaped to my small body all too well. I guess I had fallen asleep, and now my father’s tournament was over, and it was time to go. Dad and Kenny won like they always did, so my father picked me up with a single hand of broken fingers and slung me over his shoulder. “Wake up Tay-a-bay, we’re going to Good Time Charlie’s.” Thinking of that day, one of my earliest memories, a certain nostalgia comes over me. I yearn for the simplicity of a sleepy 3 year old. In that way I’m so much different from my peers. It seems like all anyone wants to do is grow up, and here I am wishing for a life that exists only in the past; a childhood that slipped much too quickly from my fingers like the fine sand at South Mission Beach. Now there’s a kid on a Missing Person’s List somewhere, and it’s all because I lost her. No matter how many times I retrace my steps it seems she’s nowhere to be found; she might as well be drowning in a lake. But I go on, and read my books and drink my coffee and have placed that nostalgia in a bulletproof safe and kept the key under my pillow only to use in the depths of my dreams. And what you’ll see if you walk by me in the street is just another passerby because I painted the transparency of my skin long ago with gold paint so when the sun comes out everyone will think I’m glistening. However it’s actually a terrible disguise, because if you get close enough you can see that I’ve crawled up in a ball inside myself and itched away at any sort of morale stored inside of there. That’s the present me, and the future me is stuck in the purgatory between fear and dreams. And when the future me graduates into my dreams, I hope that not-so-coincidentally what’s left of the nostalgic past has simultaneously decided to take a stroll through my devise. And I hope that those two meet and shake hands and exchange with each other the knowledge that the present me lives in infinite oblivion to.

Reviews

[zainul]

Excellent write.
Enjoyed the work that made me nostalgic as well.

[Wolfwind]

That was an awesome work of ink! Not only could I relate to the thoughts being conjured, but the imagery was that of an embrace. You have a nature gift at grabbing a reader and placing them to see exactly what the character is seeing. It's a great way to get the mind to open and ponder life and the universe and how time plays upon us all.

Much enjoyed!
Aaron - Wolfwind

[Taylor Salmons]

you are making my day!! THANK YOU!! :)