I remember orange afternoons, kites colored like lollipops, we bared our arms for the warm weather, felt the itchy grass, felt the love of one thousand years. I remember plump water balloons, the hot, milky nights, cradling a tea-cup, cradling your heart for it existed in mine. I remember worrying about everything and nothing at all, drifting bare-feet through the grass. I remember you rubbing my dome-shaped mosquito bites, soothing me into sleep so that I would not awake crying, howling your name, scratching my eyelids purple. I remember how quickly those afternoons melted into night, how quickly the sun, like an apricot seed, slipped out of sight, slipped out of sight. Though I am much older now and possess many worries, many real problems that require tending, nurturing, banishing, I still think back to those days, or perhaps think forward, because it is I who have moved back, it is this that is backwards, this painful regression, I am strangled by things, by empty, hollow things, I am suffocating underneath the unnecessary pressure of chores, obligations, doings, I no longer live, but exist, I am a soulless, smile-less human doing.