Coming Back

He didn’t want to look up. He didn't want to see. Would it still be there like he had left it all those years ago, that world which felt farther to him than when the tower of Babel was built, or when Noah crossed the flood, or when Adam walked with God in the garden? That world that was so dear to his heart that he had buried it deep enough so that it was dead to him.

The memories surged inside him and tried to surface, but he desperately pushed them down, and they, denied their freedom, sent shivers down his back. It would be too painful if it wasn’t. No, let it be as it is not. Let it be remembered as it has been forgotten.

But then a startling breeze brushed past him, and suddenly a sliver of memory burst through his grasp, dashed up his sinews, and stood triumphantly in the centre of his brain; and before he could detain it, it gave a victorious laugh and exploded. A picture came to him of a little boy running. Running, and running, and running. Shouting at the top of his lungs. He gasped. He looked. Immediately, the fields roared into view.

“...It's still there!”

The memories inside heard the roar and with one mighty shove broke through his defenses. They coiled up his body, like rockets climbing the heavens, and on reaching his mind, with thunderous laughter, exploded. His brain was lit up like the fourth of July. The pictures kept flashing, kept knitting, kept blooming.

He saw him a boy running through those never-ending fields, barely his torso seen above the golden stalks, his hand raised high up holding the little blue kite soaring loftily behind, his face full of bright, glorious summer, the wind in his air and in his lungs, and him shouting and laughing and whooping to the world and the blue skies above. Running, and running, and running. The kite soaring higher, and higher, and higher. His voice sounding younger, and younger, and younger.

He stood as he ran past him. He could no longer make out his blue kite against the blue sky but only a thread that connected his outstretched hand with the great expanse. It appeared that the whole firmament was his kite now, that he was pulling the entirety of heaven behind him, running those endless fields forever and ever.