MISSING PIECES
I passed by a translucent box sitting in the corner of my room a couple days ago. With nothing but time on my hands, I sat down and popped the lid off of the container.
It was filled to the brim with Legos - odd bits and pieces, colorful squares and rectangles forced into a space where they didn’t fit.
Something larger than an average Lego brick was sticking out of the middle. I pulled out a squashed-looking spaceship, one of the wings broken but most of it intact.
Vivid images, like frozen snapshots slipped over my eyes and I wondered what it would be like to live in my own head again. To construct a life, a timeline in my where I could travel to the corners of the earth, ride a shuttle to the moon, or have adventures like those movie characters every child wants to be.
A world that was impossible, but I could still live in. My own escape that I could hold in my hands.
They say we’re too young to play with toys, but are they too old to remember what it was like? To have an imagination and run untamed like the wind?
“Childish,” they muttered. “Immature,” they said, because you grow up and your toys are work and debt, your fun turns into stress and expectations.
At one point, everyone sets down the spaceship for the last time and boards the train to conformity.
But as for me, not yet.
Today, I look at the spaceship perched on my nightstand and wonder what it’s like to touch the stars without my feet leaving the ground.
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- 12/01/17