there comes a time when the memory is so vivid it turns a double truth
the grape pain meds and the stinging burn when it goes down
dulled by time
it all comes back when the music plays. remember when it was only words? the noises and these pitches have since become us
every sound now who we are
I’m crying, never sure if they’re happy or sad tears. Or both.
Maybe it’s both.
The music brings me back to where I was. When we were scared, and alone. The nostalgia only seeing itself as a wish for what has been. If there was a chance should I have taken it?
The song, as every song will, ends. Whatever vividness that used to burn here has faded. The present is my reality. This moment. Crying to the songs and stories that raised me. Now given a whole new meaning in the context of what I have become. What we have lost, and had to find again.
With every song there is that pedal into nothingness, in the gaps between sound where I can finally find my thoughts again, after all this time of listening.
So many things I could have done, back when I was young.
Do we still have that time?
— written on the inside cover of an algebra journal: “Discovering What It Means to Be Human”
Writing and photography by Hazel J. Hall.
Previously published by Suburban Witchcraft Magazine.
Hazel J. Hall 
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