a feeling, a recurring dream.
It’s 10 pm. I lie on my bed with all the lights turned off.
Everything is eerily quiet outside because of the quarantine. I’m waiting on a call from my friends that we have every once in a while. My abba is in the living room, watching random videos on facebook. The volume is always maxed out on his phone.
Suddenly, this song comes up. Sounds like something from the early 70s, something I heard my dadu listening to long ago.
The audio resonates within my room, with the moonlight seeping in through my curtains. I look up at the ceiling and try to reminisce about ’09. The blue/black — yellow/gray gradient from the moonlight and the street lights downstairs covers my ceiling in blissful patterns.
I feel like I’m drifting into a deep sleep, but I’d rather stay wide awake.
The song stops, but the feeling stays.
The feeling of being a child again.
2009,
warm sunlight within our small Lalmatia apartment, spending my evenings looking out the living room window, in front of which there’s another building.
I’d always look out the window and wonder what the other people were doing. Some were watching tv and some were never really there. If I ever got lucky, I’d see some other kids. I never spoke to them, and they never spoke to me. We’d just stare at each other.
6pm, all of the kids and adolescents went down to the ground floor to play cricket, go cycling, all kinds of stuff, every day. I’d just watch from a distance and admire how they got along with each other. I liked observing people from a distance, that was enough for me to feel like I was a part of their daily endeavours.
Whenever the evenings rolled in, dadu always listened to music, ammu was always tired from working all day long, abbu always slept, chachu was always out and chachi always stayed in her little bubble, all in their respective rooms. I had the rest of the house all to myself. I felt like the king of everything.
I didn’t want to go out, so I stayed inside most of the time. I’d grab my ammu’s veil and wrap it around my neck as a cape. I’d jump on the sofa with music playing on the TV. It was silly, but I’d give anything to experience that again. A song that would come up frequently was Postcards from Italy, a song I heavily associate with my childhood.
After hours of being a “superhero”, I finally laid down on my bed and stared at the ceiling. The same gradients and patterns I see now covered my ceiling then. I’d stare at them and wonder how they worked. Eventually, I’d fall asleep while picking my brain.
Everyday was the same thing. I was stuck in a limbo. I loved it.
now,
I play Postcards from Italy on my phone, the song from that time of my life that really stuck with me. The feeling of nostalgia I am experiencing right now cannot be explained.
I am a boy with my mother’s veil wrapped around my neck as a cape.
I am a boy with the moonlight at my fingers and sunlight seeping through the cracks of my skin.
The world is at the tip of my fingers, resting in a corner of my room, waiting to be spun at my will.
I feel like the king of everything, once again.
your friend,
Z.