Garage Sale

We are all growing up.

The pink and black sneakers that once meant the whole world to me were sold for five dollars at a garage sale...amidst a bunch of other dusty puzzle pieces of my past- now no more than trinkets to hand down to little kids for pocket change.

We're all doing the same. We've all traded each other in. At one time we flashed these friendships around like new shoes, and now we are passing them off in exchange for more fulfilling lives, and giving them to people who need them more than us.

We still clutch those memories securely, walking here and there with so and so, trampolining in the dark and scaling the world in a sad little white car.-

-They're no different than the old clothes, and videos and dolls. The ones I brush off and hold close and try to save. Why, I don't know. So they can slumber on a shelf a while longer, retaining their status as forgotten things.

Either way they end up making it outside in a musty cardboard box.

This was all mine first. I loved it before anyone else. I held on for my life.

Somehow that's unimportant, it doesn't mean I need it anymore at all.

You can function well enough without it, but it does make the heart swell remembering that it used to be yours.

I used to squish my toes between the mud and flail with all my girlish lunacy. Nothing that I had was what I wanted. None of it was solid- but I loved it just the same.

Stealing a few quick breaths of summer night's air between laughter, a drive down country roads in the car that had my picture sealed inside the dashboard, it felt like the world. It felt like forever.

I outgrew it all as quickly as an old coat, and I think I'm better for it.



Still, it's not as simple as the boxed up things- its not like I'll forget any of it. Occasionally the memories will prompt me to glance at all the "knick knacks" I have in this moment, and wonder when I will retire them as well.


Someday, ofcourse, I will have to do this all again. I will probably have to watch somebody else try you on, and breathe past the doubt that I won't find something new.  I'll still remember everything you showed me.  I'll still acknowledge how you helped me forget my past and move it on to become someone else's present.

At one point what I had was exactly what I needed and you don't go on needing the same things forever.

Somewhere on my front yard is my favorite summer, crammed between a box of costume jewelry and a doll with a dirty face. Someone is rummaging through it thoughtfully.

I promise you, it's worth every penny.