An eclipsed sun

One of my exes, her family they used to film everything. I know this not because I ever saw them holding a camera, but because on weekends they'd watch movies of things that happened way back when. Their uncle streaking at a family gathering by the lake. Trips to theme parks, camping, big cities.

One film I always remember is a garage sale that one of the daughters held with a friend of hers. They were selling little trinkets that they didn't want any more. Dolls that were no longer cool. Toys that were too young for them. But that's not why I remember it though. What I remember is that the camera was always on the daughter. The combination of her movement and the panning of the camera always had her in the foreground, her friend an eclipsed sun. Where you could only see her outer edges.

Another room

Back when I first started drinking, I was at this party, knocking back drink after drink. It wasn't a bring your own alcohol, everything was provided, and I drank with that in mind. Between drinks, I spoke with everyone. Sometimes in one on one conversations, other times in groups. Eventually someone took my glass away, I protested for a sentence or two, and then resumed talking to somebody else.

Lying in the hallway later, my coat draped over me like a tiny blanket and a bucket sitting next to my head, I could hear them all in another room laughing and talking. I could swear that at times I even heard them mentioning my name. I saw myself getting up and joining them in there, walking in and joining in with the laughing and talking, but I couldn't. I couldn't move. So I just lay there and listened to them.

Nothing got filled in at all

When I first started school, my parents bought this big blue book called School Day Treasures. For each year, there was a pouch that could hold mementos, report cards, merit badges. The book had enough pouches to account for every possible year of education from kindergarten to post-graduate work.

On the front of each pouch there was room to affix a class photo, and on the back there would be spaces to fill in information about the year that was. Activities participated in. New friends. Special events. The only one I ever filled in was the section called When I Grow Up I Want To Be. In kindergarten I wanted to be, when I grew up, a TV Star. Same with the next year. The year after that a popular film was released starring an archaeologist who travelled the world and fought the Nazis, that year, when I grew up, I wanted to be an Archaeologist. The next year it was Policeman. The next, Detective. After that, Spy. In the later years, nothing got filled in at all, not even the When I Grow Up I Want To Be section.

The stars are falling

After moving all of my worldly possessions out of my flat, unloading them from the cars, after the pizza is ordered and the beer is bought, I give a toast. "To my friends, I wish to offer my gratitude for without your help," I say, "I would never have been able to move back into my father's house."

My childhood bedroom has been converted into a storage room, meaning that everything that people didn't want anymore, rather than throw it out, it's all been put into that room. Dehumidifiers that don't work. Books that will never be read ever again. A set of flannel sheets that shed so much you wake up in the middle of the night unable to breathe. And boxes. And boxes. And boxes.

Cleaning all of it out of the room, clearing enough space to put my bed down, I notice that the glow in the dark stars along the ceiling of my old room, I notice that they're peeling. Whatever glue that held them up there must have dried up, because the stars are falling.