Things You Will Never Get Back, pt. 2

(Pt. 1)

Eating ice cream cones on the beach in the summer with your cousin.  Rough, callused feet from climbing all over jagged rocks.  Salt-encrusted eyebrows and skinny, tanned legs.

Catching a blue bellied lizard with a noose made out of a grass blade.  Suddenly realizing the unintentional cruelty of this act, setting the creature down remorsefully, and resolving to never catch a lizard with a noose again.

Running through the backyard when you were little, picking up snails on the pavement, and tossing them gently back into the flower bed to save them from being dealt with less mercifully by your parents.

Actually believing that the Y2K bug was a real thing, and that it would wreak havoc on humanity.  Thinking it was to blame when your parakeet escaped from its cage and almost flew out of the house on New Years.

Whispering "olive juice" to your boyfriend before you were comfortable enough around his parents to say "I love you" (it looks the same if you're lip reading).  It was immature, but you thought it was cute, and it always made you giddy when he said it back.

The way creative inspiration for songwriting used to flow.  Usually it came at the most inconvenient times (like during class), but it would take over, and you'd be left shaking, reading over the words again and again, wanting nothing more than to go home to work on it.

Wandering around ancient Roman ruins.  Sitting on broken columns, collecting tesserae.  Not being quite old enough yet to fully appreciate how amazing that was.

Reading something that expressed some intimate feeling you'd had yourself so succinctly that it was almost spooky.  Wanting to memorize entire passages and write them everywhere you went.

That time when you were very little and your parents took you to a colleague's house and left you to play with his daughter.  You were envious of all the toys she had, and so you tried to trick her into giving you some.  Your parents caught you and there was a big scene.  To this day you feel awful about it, and seeing her again in high school was awkward because you realized it was likely that she remembered it too.

The day in third grade when your classmate died.  He was run over by a bus on his way to school, and there was an assembly for him.  You tried very hard to make yourself cry because you didn't want to appear indifferent, but you felt nothing, and you were angry at yourself for it.

The time you took whippits with a friend in high school.  It made you laugh uncontrollably, which made you think about the fact that you probably looked like you were having fun, even though you felt like a total idiot.

How you used to wear black Converse shoes with huge rips on the sides.  You made sure to wear mismatched and brightly colored socks every day as a fashion statement.  You also wore a fork bent around your wrist as a bracelet.

The first time you heard Regina Spektor's "Lady."  You were in a cabin with your best friend at her father's Baha'i resort, and she was asleep with the music coming softly from the headphones she had under her pillow.  You were so entranced by the song that you carefully took the iPod from her hand and played the song again, 6 times.

How you used to fit under the little coffee table in the living room when you first moved into the house the you lived in for 14 years.  You would hide out under there sometimes and find little shapes and creatures in the grain of the wood.

Sitting under the bush with little blue flowers that always smelled like bubble gum with a girl who had never been nice to you.  It was after school, she was upset, and no one else was around, so she vented to you about troubles at home.  Suddenly feeling immense tenderness toward her.  She wasn't mean to you after that.

Swimming in the Adriatic during a storm.  The sea was warmer than usual, and the rain hit the surface and made the water looks like broken glass.  In the distance, the forest and the majestic mountains stood out dramatically against the dark sky, and you thought you'd never seen something so beautiful in your life.