I went through a box that my mother passed down to me. You see, I filled it with things from my childhood up to my college years. I had planned on making the box a small start to my Hope Chest .. but well, I’m not quite ready to start stacking quilts and memories into one of those. I am not settled, and this small box is enough – for now – to carry my most precious memories with me.

It’s been awhile since I’ve looked through it by myself. I reflected a great deal on the child-me that I saw depicted in those pictures. Where the hell I found magenta knee-socks when I was 9, I’ll never know. We can only hope the bastard who created them has been sent into ruin. Furthermore, as to why I was only wearing socks instead of shoes outside remains a mystery. I remember the days of my childhood, but I cannot peer into them as anyone but an observer now. It’s impossible for me to fathom the thoughts, feelings and actions of the girl I was back then. I can only replay the events and haphazardly guess the motivations I had. It’s a queer thing to realize you can become an outsider in your own life, that the child-you could likely stick her tongue out at the woman you’ve become. I was a private child, and her reckless smile doesn’t allow me to sink in past her eyes. I was that kid who knew everybody, but no one really knew.

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One of my friends — well, it doesn’t really matter how it happened. But we talked about our smile lines for a moment.

This entry is already beginning in a way that I dislike. I’ve halted, stuttered and stopped and nothing about the way that I write seems to flow anymore. But it doesn’t matter, not right now, I’ll acknowledge my shame in my weakening craft later.

I looked into the mirror and I wasn’t exactly sure who I saw. I recognize the face, the lines of my jaw and the soft, dark skin under my eyes. Though there’s nothing particularly spectacular about the blue of my irises, I’ve realized that those dark pupils had weight. They were pitch black irons, and to me it was like seeing through an immeasurable ocean to a dark anchor resting on white sand below.

What boat bobs on those unsettled waves, tethered there, I do not know.

All I know that is she has proved sea worthy so far. The creaks of her wooden planes do not pitch high, as they did when new lumber would be under pressure. This noise has grown seasoned, and groans throughout the entire vessel. There have been places that her sails have been patched, and a great many causes and their flags had been pulled up to display. She has had more than her share of salt crusted, sodden white sheets pulled up in surrender. The sound those flags make during a storm, when they droop with the weight of water and slap the rigging is northing short of terrifying.

No flag snaps crisp in the air now, she is a vessel that is waiting for the captain to catch a breath.