A Memory

Street lights, squeaky screen doors, the sounds of voices echoing through the branches of ancient oaks. In a moment I am back there. It's not as much of a place as it is a time. A time when anything was possible and everything you could ever need or want was just a few footsteps off of the concrete steps that led from a front porch. I wonder sometimes if my children will think of this place in the same way that I do. Probably not, things are different now, home is different now. Everything is different now. Things don't smell the same, seasons don't feel the same, but I guess that's the nature of time. Once a time is gone it can never be again except for in those memories. I can remember the way it felt curled up in a chair beneath a blanket next to a roaring wood stove better than I can remember what I ate for breakfast. Maybe it's because I know that feeling will never be duplicated. They say that you can never go home again and in a way that's true. You can never revisit a time, once it has passed it can never be recaptured. So now home for me is just a memory, the street lights, squeaky screen doors and oak tree branches wrapped in the voices of the past and the fading shadows of a time and place that was but will never be again.