Knowing the Feeling
To say I “remember” a feeling is perhaps a disingenuous statement. Because I still know it.
Etched in my bones, tiny fissures and seemingly forgettable fractures are the blueprints for that unbridled joy, the freedom that seemed limitless though it had parameters of “across the street and no farther,” the euphoria of staying up past the midnight hour when the moon was in a spot you had rarely seen in your sky. My soul stores the recipes for mint leaf summers, petting newborn kittens next door, dancing in the livingroom when the old dinosaur of an air conditioner almost made it too loud to hear the music. My body may have forgotten how to run through the alleyway while safely dodging the wires, or how to swing on the railings that would make your hands black. But the rest of me still knows.
Maybe it is not that we “forget” feelings as we grow older. Perhaps we just never thought to verbalize them; and, if we did, would not waste such valuable time articulating instead of acting out dandelion wishes. Maybe we never had the adequate words, neither then nor now. Perhaps we fail when we try to intellectualize, formalize, describe those feelings. Maybe we should learn from our younger selves and just feel. Our hearts will remember that they have never forgotten.
