Where have all the flowers gone?

How is it that the clock never stops ticking? What can I do to pause myself, to stop time from passing? I’m scared. Scared of growing old, confronting change, losing moments, seeing how these memories I have gathered fade away with the passing of time. This nostalgic feeling reaches me from within, this melancholic feeling for that what will never return.

I remember every photograph that I have taken, these pictures I collect from a past which I can no longer change: Places I have left behind, impregnated by the stories and emotions which I can only relive in my heart. People that have changed, who are maybe no longer the same, and others who, despite their absence are still present within me.

It’s a curious thing, how sentimentality can be so contradictory: I miss the moments we had yet am happy to be able to relive those memories with a smile. Sometimes when I read old diary entries of adventures I once had, I feel the flowing of time reaching out for me, pulling me away from a past I once called present. The laughs we had, the lands we discovered, the long school days that never seemed to end, the late nights in the library during which we should have been sleeping… It all seems an idyllic past; a fragile bubble that I can no longer touch.

I crave to relive those moments with the same eyes, the same innocence I had all those months ago. But I know that time does not forgive. Time erases the imprints, leaving only fractured traces of memories I hold onto. When I think about the future, I ask myself: Once this is all over, what will remain of me? These moments will no longer be mine; time will have mercilessly taken them away from me.

Late hours of reflection have reminded me that I must live in the moment. That the past, however much it may weigh on me, cannot be recovered. During these late nights, amidst the sound of crashing waves and flattering sails, the same question always arises: Where do the moments that define us go? Where do I store the laughs, the moments, the adventures, the promises that once seemed forever?

Inspired by a poem form Laia Jiménez.