I can’t say I remember that summer. I tend to forget those kinds of memories. All I have of my own life are impressions. Those summers, though… You can’t be a kid and forget what summer was like.
I was getting to the point where it wasn’t all golden anymore, where life wasn’t just a beam of sunshine. Or maybe that juncture had already passed. It probably never existed in the first place- memory being what it is, just a factory of new information you’re told is from the past. Anyway, you can see the gold in the picture, and it’s definitely not coming from me. Just sitting in the back of someone’s mom’s car, next to two girls I can barely remember. I had become the pensive kid, even though for all my life I’d been the goofy one. It never showed, though, and it was a while before I realized that that was who I’d become, let alone anyone else. This was photographic evidence.
The photo looks older than it is. That’s probably why I’m a little confused about details. I had to be ten or eleven at least, which throws me off a little. I was in the shit by then. The divorce would have happened by then. The always smiling kid in those warm memories couldn’t process, couldn’t imagine what was about to happen. At this point it already had. But the warmth was still there; the light through the dust motes still connected the carpet to the sky. You couldn’t burn the warmth out of those summer days, even if if it got to 110º. I’d just melt myself and smile.
This is a photo whose actual story is long forgotten.
Please go forth and make up new ones for it. :D
(And in case you’re wondering, yes, that’s me in the middle. The look on my face is a pretty good representation of my entire childhood.)
