Late May. Pacific Coast.
My friends and I playing under the stars.
I run to dodge the coming tide
and a game arising from recesses past.
A game of tag in our bare feet
breaks on the beach surrounding us,
taking us back. Clouds of sand
fly around our ankles, as Ben and Nikki chase us.
My mind is suddenly back in kindergarten
running from
Brennan and RK’s game of kissing tag. And
when we tire ourselves
the ground is dotted with bodies
giggling and watching the stars. We’ve graduated,
we are lost, my friends and I.

Breezes play with the scent of the ocean. A trip together
of endings and
new beginnings.
The flood of memories presses us,
bringing the past back. We are
sandwiched between our collective pasts and our
individual futures.
We are slipping away in the future,
traipsing off into the unknown
A night spent reflecting upon the deck
of a beach house with the sound of a
guitar strumming as we sing

on our last night all together,
the song that Jon and Kymie wrote about our
high school ride. I am back at
kindergarten graduation
singing “The Circle of Life” next to
Jenny. Then on to
high school graduation
last Thursday. Standing next
Jenny again as we sing
“Bridge Over Troubled Water.”

Pictures thread through my brain
like slides in an old projector. Wendy and I
getting into trouble in dance class as we chased each other
with the stuffed monkey. Nikki, Amanda, and I
on the tennis team with our
sock tan lines and crazy dancing and
tennis racquet air guitars .
Cole and I
talking until two in the morning in
seventh grade about what we
wanted to be when we
grew up.
We are grown up now and

all I am is
baffled, but
these pictures
wrap me in a blanket, warm and impervious.
Take me back to that beach.
Take me back to my memories, for
tonight, we are safe from the future.
Tonight, we are still kids.