You keep awaiting the revelation that would blind you like lightning and transform you into a new self. When you think back to your childhood, it’s just a swift puncture of moments. Adolescence is little more than bulges and night-sweats, begged rides and shiftiness. You watch the past spin by, short clips of a film; each moment’s like a sun-mottled still. You see yourself—gawky, a bit awkwardly balanced, riding your bike, waving hello to someone in the distance (or is it goodbye?) as you’re flying down the crest of a hill. A breeze trembles the catalpa, late summer, and the whole season dissolves into pointillism. Earthward, each memory shines for an instant, strangely disincarnated, before it’s absorbed back into a dream-limned nimbus, a fire-lit flip of a coin. The days’ silhouettes vanish in diminishing light. A handful of fragments. A backdrop of ruin. In retrospect, the past is a series of indefinite changes, which includes, too, the changes wrought by forgetfulness. Looking back, you realize, yes—all along the self has been composed of nothing but stopgaps, quick flashes, bright cracks onto other worlds. Such frozen lightning.

Will Cordeiro

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