Photographs
Looking into the photograph, you see blurred smiles - a mixture of washed out faces and shadowed cheekbones. The boys turn their eyes towards the camera, some squinting, some braving the sun's glare, all with the same expressions of exhaustion and joy. The grass they're standing on is presumably verdant green, but the vibrant color has been bleached and yellowed by time.
The boys have become men, and the field has been fenced off for proposed renovations - closed indefinitely.
There is a dropping feeling in your stomach, an indefinable ache reaching down into your groin and up into your neck. Who are these people? These boys. You could pass them on the street tomorrow and neither of you would know - yet you hold their childhood in your hands.
How curious.
Like the setting sun behind abandoned toys in a nursery, bathing the rocking horse and building blocks in a caramel light, you bear witness to a lost time and place. You see the forgotten lives, you remember the deserted spaces.
Where people have left, you arrive. What people have cast aside, you take in your hands, lovingly.
These unwanted memories, stranded on the side of the street, each and every one is collected.
Each and every one has a place in your collection, your mausoleum of nostalgia.
And you pledge your existence for eternity, because someone has to look after them. Someone must remain.