untitled #24

You're leaning against the crash barrier in a street you've known and romanticised since you were six years old. The air is cool but not cold with a light breeze, the scent of a chimney having been lit a couple of houses away filling it and you're acutely aware of the fact that summer is over. This is the first time in months you're wearing a jumper during the day. You look down at your battered trainers and the whole situation - the street, the cold metal of the barrier, your shoes, the fact that it's autumn once again - makes you feel like it's 2002 and none of the things that scarred you have happened yet. Every now and then you remember a theory of temporality that you think you've heard of, that says everything in time happens at the same time, in different dimensions, and instead of time progressing, the dimensions progress. Something like that.

You remember it fondly whenever you miss being a child, thinking that somewhere, you're still running home from school with your Batman backpack. Right now, at the crash barrier, you feel like a glitch put you back into the universe at the beginning of the new millenium, and you dare not move, scared the feeling will go away. Thought by thought, everything seeps out of your head. You don't think, you don't hurt. You're completely still, drinking in the view of your shoes and your knitted jumper and the cobblestones at your feet, and the street winding down between pretty houses, as long as the universe still lets you use your seven year old self's eyes. The chimney scent smells so divine in the newborn September air. Then your phone vibrates and the magic is gone.