the present (the point where the past wins its race against time)

the present (the point where the past wins its race against time)

When the yellow yolk of the Sun first touches the horizon in the distance, you flinch as if it touched you instead. You look up, expecting the Sun to be swallowed by the Earth, feeling the yolk burst in your mouth and trickle down your throat in salty wetness, but it lingers. There’s an itch in your throat and you lift your hand to touch it, but it goes away.

When you were little, you saw the clouds and imagined tasting them like cotton candy, feeling the wispy strings of sugar melt on your tongue and evaporate before they reached your stomach. You would bite down on ice cream, the clack of your teeth ringing in your ears enough to distract you from the melted goo that slid down your throat like water. You stared at the thin strands of white hair that seemed to follow spiders everywhere they went, imagining an invisible strand following you instead and pulling at it to see if it could pull you backwards. You never found it.

When you’re 11 years old you sit in the back of a white (slightly dirty) Honda minivan that’s been with you for as long as you can remember, sandwiched between the back-seat window and a cluster of suitcases to your right. 613 miles later, you arrive—home.

Sweat prickles your back in tiny little dots, staining your shirt and leaving perfectly round droplets on your skin, almost enough to count. Your focus shifts to your hands to find them clamped around your blanket in a vise-like grip, fingernails pressing into your palms through the cloth in the frugal hope of drawing something out—courage, maybe. You hear the door behind you creak open, sure that the devil has come to get you. It’s your mom, and you breathe a sigh of relief.

Your first day of 5th grade, you look up to see your homeroom teacher. Her lips are turned up at the ends, and her eyes are crinkled in neat little lines, like whiskers. You remember seeing those same wrinkles somewhere else, but you can’t quite grasp it at the moment. Later, after your dad has come to pick you up early from school, those same lines are framing his own eyes, but you don’t seem to notice. You’re too focused on your own thoughts to pay attention to his expression, slightly hazy, like the few seconds after someone blows a hot breath on a cold window, right before the breath has faded completely from the glass. You come back to your senses to find a slight tremor in your palms, and you tuck the tips of your fingers into the groove midway down your hands, as if there isn’t already enough tension inside you.

During the day, the ground pulls at your feet with every step. You briefly imagine melting into the floor and burrowing yourself into the cracks of the sidewalk, but then you’d have to live with the wads of chewed gum that litter the concrete—identical in shape, identical in color, identical in their stillness. The death of the gum makes you think about your parents, though you don’t know why. All you know is that you don’t want them to disappear.

That night, you lay awake, scraping the blunt edge of your thumbnail against the pad of your forefinger in time with the ticking of the clock a few feet from your bed. The ticking grows louder, and your pupils haven’t yet adjusted to the dark, so you keep your eyes open and guide them toward your mom’s back instead. You lay one finger on the bedspread, just enough to brush the fraying strand of cotton pulling away from her shirt. Your heart calms, slowly, and you force your eyelids shut despite their protests.

The next morning, you find yourself crying—again. It feels like your cheeks will never be dry, but fifteen minutes pass and the last tear falls, though you don’t notice it. You close your eyes and shadows bloom behind them, clouding your mind with a fear that tightens your fists and thumps against your heart like a drum. But it’s a gentle tap this time, so you unravel your fingers and give them space to breathe.

One particular afternoon, you sit across from a middle-aged woman on one of those hard plastic chairs hospitals love to scatter around. You shift every few seconds to numb the cold seeping through the plastic onto your skin. Your stomach is hollow, and there’s a steady thudding in your ears that tugs at your heart with every beat, as if your organs are being rearranged. The room is quiet except for the woman’s soft voice as she recites words from the pages of your diary like a shopping list. Maybe this is what therapy is supposed to be like, but you can’t bring yourself to return. Instead, you pick a fidget toy out of a basket as a parting gift and shut the door gently behind you.

A few years pass—the disposal of empty calendars means nothing. One night is darker than the rest, and you sit next to your friend on a bench behind her house. The wind whispers at your ear, hesitant to disturb the silence. Moonlight paints the lake in shifting colors, each ripple flickering as if the water itself is dancing.

The breeze carries something unfamiliar—maybe comfort, maybe just the quiet you’ve been avoiding. Sitting next to her, you feel the weight in your chest loosen, if only by a thread. You don’t talk about the loop of what if that’s been tightening inside you for years. You just sit there, letting the water breathe for you, letting the night hold steady.

Later that week, you sleep by yourself for the first time in months. Your thoughts rattle at first, loud and fast, but you focus on the steady sound of your breathing—the inhale that doesn’t ask permission, the exhale that doesn’t demand control. The shadows on the wall shift, but they don’t feel as threatening. You pull the blanket closer, not to hide, but to remind yourself that you’re present.

Morning comes quietly. You don’t wake up with your cheeks wet. Your heart still stutters sometimes, and the fear still lurks at the edges of your mind, but it doesn’t take up the entire room anymore. It sits off to the side, smaller than before, like a thought you can choose to put down.

The years stretch forward, uneven but real. You learn that the present isn’t a finish line but a meeting point—where the past stops racing long enough for you to look it in the eye. You learn that fear can live in your lungs without owning them, and that growing up is not outgrowing what hurts you, but learning you don’t have to let it steer everything.

And now, when the sun lowers itself onto the horizon, you don’t flinch. You watch the yolk linger, warm and whole, and for the first time you let it sink into you gently, without imagining its disappearance. You sit with the moment as it is—not perfect, not painless, but yours—and that is enough.