If I could, I would bottle the sound
of a Game Boy startup, the way safety
scissors glide through construction paper,
the shutter of a Polaroid camera,
the kshhh of a spinning yoyo,
and create a perfume
to spray on my pillow
to remind me
of it, like an old love
that left on good terms.
I would savour the notes of my morning
sandwich in Dad’s teal ‘95 Corolla as
Fresh Air played on the radio,
the memory of the roller rink’s
jazz cup walls performing their blacklight dance,
the joyful jingle of an ice cream truck.
Hourglass time never falling up,
no longer dumping Lego on our carpets
or hoping we can get the Crayola 64 count.
The bike spoke still ticks.
Our crayons still lay forgotten
in a white-lidded Tupperware container
in the attic with the rest of our childhood.
About the Author
Melissa is a Latinx writer and the author of The Love in Between (2021). She is the founding Editor in Chief of The Minison Project. You can
find her poetry published in The Daily Drunk Magazine, Versification Zine, and Dwelling Literary, as well as Fahmidan Magazine and The Minison Zine. Her prose can be found in collections by Cemetery Gates Media and Kandisha Press.
Bandit Fiction is an entirely not-for-profit organisation ran by passionate volunteers. We do our best to keep costs low, but we rely on the support of our readers and followers to be able to do what we do. The best way to support us is by purchasing one of our back issues. All issues are ‘pay what you want’, and all money goes directly towards paying operational costs.
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