shorthand

We wake up some days thinking about the time that's passed since we last thought about passing time. We're different people on these days, probably unable to recognize our own bodies or come to terms with all that we've done.

Childhood ends the first time we realize the time gone by.

Maybe it was the first time you considered skipping school because nothing you could wear or say or do felt right. Maybe it was when you  laughed at your old journal's laborious and misspelled entries of early morning television and bowls of dry cereal. Maybe it was the first night you spent in a boy's bed. But maybe it's none of these things. Maybe you're nineteen years old and driving to the sea, unable to remember what it's like to be a child or fathom all you've seen.

You remember playing with dolls, laughing at an off-color joke because you didn't understand racism, or crying in your mother's arms. But you don't understand the dolls' simplicity, there's a burning shame when you think of the joke, and you're unable cry in your mother's arms without feeling his touch.

You don't remember what it's like to be a child.

Maybe this is growing up, or maybe this is just time passing.