Nostalgia is not a precise machine. It does not preserve, it reshapes. What was once a conversation becomes only the idea of one, a feeling attached to words long since lost. And then, inevitably, even the feeling fades, until all that remains is the vague notion that something was once there.
Perhaps this is the cruelty of remembrance: that some things we hold onto dearly, by nature, is transcient. There is a moment when recollection turns bittersweet—detached, analytical, an understanding that what once seemed endless was always fleeting. The ones who let go first did so effortlessly. For them, the past is an event concluded. For us, it is a place we wished to inhabit forever.
And yet, these fleeting moments of poetic insignificance shape us. These fractures carve into us, shaping the architecture of who we become. It’s a paradox. We lose sleep trying to connect the dots, we lose our minds trying to preserve whatever we can. Subatomic particles into atoms, atoms into molecules, molecules into matter. We live so we can dream of what we miss, like a substance of chemicals yearning to feel what its skeletons are made up of.