Writing!

Poetry :

Prose :

Uncertainty

I have successfully lived through over a dozen moves in my twenty-four years of life. Once again, I unpack my life and all its contents into the echoing freshly-painted walls of my latest “Home Sweet Home”. Mountainous piles of boxes line the walls and hang dangerously above me. The floor groans under the weight. There is so much debris to sort through that I want to give up before I even make a dent.

Then I come across the dusty old Xerox box. This keepsake box of memories has followed me since my first move. A colourful assortment of pen pal letters and old wrinkled photographs from simpler times stick out from under the lid. Homesickness paints a smile across my face as I life the box from the cardboard mountain, careful to avoid an avalanche of material possessions. I place it gently down on a nearby end table. The midday sun washes over me as it streams in from a large window. Freshly disturbed dust swims in the light as I removed the time-warped blue lid. Taking time to absorb the emotions that would otherwise drown me, I begin to leaf through the yellowing pages.

I pull out a book of tortured teenage poems which once poured like glacial falls from a young girl's heart. The familiar flowery scent of a long-forgotten perfume fills the air as I open the cover. I turn the pages and stop suddenly.

A photograph carefully pressed between the sheets draws my fingers in. Feeling the weight and shine of the photo paper, I picture what had been burned into my mind over many hopeless nights of longing. As I flip it right-side-up, a wave of nostalgia takes over.

Once again I am thirteen with a future as certain as the ground beneath my feet. I am going to marry my first love, my soul mate, my friend. Every day we run together in the schoolyard as carefree as the wind. After school we walk home holding others' hands. Inseparable since the day he tackled me, the toughest tomboy around, I have unyielding confidence in our bond.

Without warning my family and I move four provinces away, creating a dream-destroying landslide behind us.

Several uncomfortable years pass by. I adjust as one would to the cold. I open an envelope that smells sweetly of Mountain Spring Tide laundry detergent – a smell that always reminds me of him. There is a photograph inside, I pull it out.

At sixteen, he looks much older than in my memories. Gazing into his glossy eyes, I am filled with the legs-swept-from-under-me inviting warmth that comes whenever our eyes meet. His coy half-smile runs down my spine like a hot breeze over the cool ocean, visible only as a blush across my cheeks. I am, however, helplessly aware of the vast chasm between us.

The blinding sunlight moves over my eyes, forcing me back to reality. I stand in my cardboard cave a decade from where my mind had wandered. Turning my back to the light, I refocus on the photograph in my hand.

He is so young. I run my fingers lightly over his shiny matte-gloss face, trying to remember the softness of his skin. Although we have kept in touch through the years, reality remains stronger than the power of any childhood dream. He will never know how long I gazed upon him. The heat that has been brewing on my cheeks is now a rose-coloured embarrassment born of staring too long at something of which I have tried in vain to let go. I replace the photograph in the book of poetry, without taking my eyes from his, and slide it back into the great treasure trove of faded photos and forgotten promises.

I slump back against the wall and slide to a seated position on the ground. I no longer take notice of the cardboard stalagmites looming over me. Cloud begin to form outside, blocking the sunlight that was streaming in. I close my eyes tightly as my head begins to pound. My head rests against my bent knees. What I once thought was certain and sure, will never be realized. Resentment and regret slowly wash over memories once rainbow-coloured with joy. I long to once again feel so sure of something but I am left alone in a dark cave of uncertainty. My childlike wonder and naïve faith fade with the last drops of light.