Summer Cleaning

Locking away memories is a tricky ordeal. You can’t be discriminating. You realize that the crumpled first place ribbon has just as much reason to go as the perfectly preserved “5 days late!” paper. The failures you locked away with the adrenaline of “I’ll be graduating soon!” start to resurface, and you realize that you were as dissatisfied then as you are now, but it was easier then, because at least you had something to be dissatisfied about. Your high school career was a sparkling success, as seen in the thank you cards with allusions to honors and accolades. But no one knows about that now. No one in Cambridge, or even at the internship you’re hoping to get. You’re hoping they’ll figure it out -- you’re bright -- because you made it, right? You’re here, you’re now, you’re this new generation with a moral obligation to save the world, and you will, you will, you’ve always wanted to. Even the words don’t flow well anymore. Maybe you shouldn’t have locked away the list of words to use to avoid “show” in formal writing. Maybe you should have been the responsible one and scanned it to send to that rising senior who will follow in your footsteps. Maybe, maybe. You promised yourself to have “no regrets,” and you don’t have any, it’s just that you don’t have that many reasons to rejoice either. Because you still pack stuff you’ll need soon into your neon/argyle backpack to take to high school, and you still trip over words when you’re somewhat inspired but not inspired enough for the words to really flow. So you go back to cleaning your room.