By Allison Stein
Inspiration arises from a variety of experiences, ideas, and emotions. In the below excerpt from my creative writing notebook, a childhood photograph sparked my contemplation about identity and the evolution of self. Enjoy!
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Translucent blue eyes, crystallized in a time-faded photo, blaze urgently into my own. My adolescent fingertips clear the surface of this forgotten childhood image, unsettling the dust. Ten years ago, I embodied the silhouette of this little girl, my body, too, absorbed in rose-dawn winter sunlight. On the elementary school playground, my mitten-covered hands enveloped the frosty metal of swing set chains whose oblong squares funneled light into shape.
In a single fleeting moment, I imagine the photo to be a portal—a means of return—yet, too, I understand the limits of my naïve dream. Images preserve but do not resurrect. Retrospect, then, is an unfriendly place. It gives one the intuitive apprehension that certain versions of selves have become inaccessible through age or experience, or perhaps through the simultaneous progression of both.
Never again will I be eight years old—a lover of height and wind and fear. Truth is, each of us has cold dreams buried beneath playground woodchips.
Today I am 18 years of age, a messy amalgamation of young and old. I stand at some undefinable crossroads of everything—torn between truth and lies, tears and strength. They tell me, press forward. They tell me, move on, let go, grow up. But my life is locked within that dusty photo, its blurred pixels rendering colors indistinguishable.
I found this and naturally did enjoy