[ WP ] Memento mori - Remember , you will die .

In the backyard of my childhood, there was a stream that served many purposes. The summer, it was the space that surrounded the minnows my sister and I would catch. In fall, it was the collector of golden leaves. Then it became a frozen avoidance that separated us from the powdery wilderness just past it. On one afternoon, it was the catcher of lightning. When the rain stopped, we ran out to the smell of burning and broken trees. There was no glowing glass-sand like in the movies. Only the charred and the stream. 
 Sometime in my early teens, we moved across town to accommodate our growing collection of siblings and belongings. The new house was much bigger, but the yard was filled with landscaping. Everything smelled different. 
 There was a summer when all of my friends were traveling and my siblings became boring. I would go on long bike rides to pass the time. On accident one afternoon, I found myself in front of the old house. The shutters were blue, and new trees were planted in the front yard. I was just barely brave enough to set my bike carefully against a tree and walk silently around the house. There were the broken trees, which looked like bone from lack of water. 
 
 I walked back around to my bike and never came back.
