Reverie Reminiscence

Warm yellow light dripped in from the dusty window, casting the room in a hazy glow. A cloud of drifting dust languidly danced in the sold beams of sun slanting in through the shuttered windows, wisping about as the door slowly jimmied off the sunken frame and swung around, softly slamming against the pile of old hardcovers stack up as a makeshift door stop beneath the dented wallboard.

Taking a hesitant step over the threshold, her sock sunk into the familiar feeling of the carpet, the dingy grey fibers flowed past as she walked slowly to the center of the room. A subtly stifling stillness hung in the air, surrounding her as it stayed there over the bed, untouched after all these years; the shelf of old accolades, gold painted soccer balls on plastic pedestals sat in pristine patience as testaments to distance victories; a desk covered with books strewn carefully with their worn spines and dogeared pages, a 2009 Grand Canyon mug with an assortment of bite mark pocked pencils and disassembled bits of pens.

Sighing as she slid into the creaky chair, her gaze moved carelessly as it meandered over the physical items collected throughout the room; each item recalled who she was when she got it; each one a tangible anchor to a person she wasn’t anymore, to a time she could only faintly remember in foggy recollection muddied by time and mood.

A scratching of wood against woods as she dragged the drawer out, fighting against the entropy of time and the settled grooves of years of rest. Mementos, sacred objects to a teenager who wanted to preserve the present for posterity, to perverse for her now. She turned over the leather-bound diploma in her hands, shuffling through the collection of cards containing messages from family, tiny ticket stubs from experiences she vaguely recalled she would never forget, a letter exclaiming the unending love an ex had for her, pictures from a club she was the president of senior year, the reverse sides strewn with crude hand writing (somewhere between script and legible), littered with inside jokes and references she smirked at.

Turning to look at the bed tightly tucked, her gaze rested on the stuffed squid she had played with long before she had any cogent memories. Recalling the stories she had been told and her fabricated memories, she remembered how she had won it from the boardwalk--or how dad had bought it from the game operator when her 4 year old self couldn’t get the little plastic circles on the red bottles.

On the top of the dresser at the foot of the bed was her cheap record player and collection of overly famous indie records she had thought she was underground for listening to. The speakers she had taken from her grandfather’s basement and soldered together for a crunchy full analog experience rested neatly in a haphazard heap of wires, mismatched gages and electrical tape dangling, on the ground between the bed and the dresser. Those records held a special place in her mind, a feeling of summer heat and a restless boredom permeated their sonic sweeps and melodious choruses. She would be laid out on the bed, her friend sitting against the wall. They would talk about life, about the future, about nothing and everything. Those feelings, the atmosphere, that was all pressed into those records now.

She walked over to the record player, blew the thick layer of caked dust off the lid. Thumb running over the spines, she pulled out one of the records, one she hadn’t heard in a while. The needle rustled into the groove, scratching through the speaker. A reverbed-out guitar, the airy vocals match, the deep thumping of drums. Lying staring up at the tiny glow in the dark stars stuck to the ceiling, she closed her eyes and let the music fill her. It was impossible to get back there, would she even want to. But it recalled the feeling, or maybe this was never how she felt. There must be a difference between the instantaneous feelings of the eternal present and the enveloping echoes of the past.

The creak on the third stair as she hurried down to her family waiting in the living room. Looking up at her empty hands halfway hidden in the sleeves of her sweater, her mother asked softly, “Honey, did you get the shoes?”

Stopping at the bottom of the stairs, she blinked twice slowly, then pivoted around and hurried back up the stairs. Idle chatter and pleasantries echoed up the off-white walls as she rounded the corner and walked back to her old room.

Crouching down into the soft carpet, she lifted up the patterned comforter and looked over the myriad disordered clutter under the bed. A box, another differently shaped box, cleats, old toys, the beat-up boots she wore everyday in freshman year, the dress flats she didn’t bring to college. Sticking her arm under, she felt around before grabbing them and dragging them out.

“Found them? Great.” Her mother exclaimed from the couch as she plattered down the stairs and turned sharply into the kitchen to avoid the general crowd of family in the living room. Only her cousin sat cross-legged on the wooden chair at the tiny table under the window next to the fridge.

“Hey, Fern” she exclaimed as the kid looked up, floofing his clump of bangs up out of his eyes.

“Hey, Hierotia.” He said back as he looked back down at his game system.

She knocked open the fridge door and carefully inspected the cluttered mess of food she had studied only hours before. The shelves were stuffed full of casseroles and lasagnas well-meaning neighbors and family friends had brought over with unsure smiles and sentimental notes.

Sitting in the back between Eucti and Fern, she shifted uncomfortably in her dress, adjusting the sleeves of her sweater and crossing and uncrossing her arms. The music blasting out of her earbuds could barely cover up the rushing road sounds, the chatter of disparate conversations, and the blaring 70s rock her dad was playing from the radio.

The streets passing by outside the window dripped with an unsettling familiarity; the closed down theater is a restaurant now; the diner she had gone on her first date at had different landscaping; the side streets her and Eucti had biked down in the summers seemed smaller; the scattered teens walking the sidewalks were unknown to her, but they were doing what she and her friends had done, recreating the cycles, I guess.

A song switched on, the upbeat pop chords shattered into her ears. She flipped over her zebra print phone and shuffled to the next song, then the next, then the next, then the

Unlocking her phone, she navigated to the music app and manually selected the songs to best keep her mind in the mood it currently floated in.