it always drifts off too early, westward to the islands

"Think of light and how far it falls, to us. To fall, we say, naming a fundamental way of going to the world - falling." -William Kittredge

it is a strange thing, to go home, even now, when home is so close to where i live and to visit is no longer a rarity. it is why i cannot imagine living anywhere for too long, it can be suffocating, everything you remember. sometimes i will give friends from other times in my life tours of this place, the tree where i began to learn Japanese, the tractor-trailer sized tire swing where, while wearing a purple panda shirt, i had my first kiss, the middle school soccer field where we sang over the top renditions of Queen, the house where i grew up and stuffed notes into the floor with the hope that someday, decades from now, a little girl my age would find and take solace in them, in their descriptions of my interpretation of a 10-year-old's world.
it's strange, to see things as they were more than as they are - to know where the ice cream store was that is now a bar, to remember O'Brien's News across the street, where friends made out with their first pack of cigarettes and smoked them behind the library, to see 6th grade versions of yourself and your best friend walking down Lancaster Avenue and speaking of lives we never wanted to tame.
i remember so well crying as i watched my grandparents' car drive away after they had come to visit when i was in fourth grade. i cried because of the finality of all moments, and i promised to always remember that time - leaning out the window, smelling spring, waving to people who could no longer see me. and so i have, remembered.