I once lived in Illinois, in a suburb an hour’s drive west of Chicago. In summer, the scent of freshly cut grass would permeate the heavy air, thick with dew and traces of citrus. A nearby fishing pond nestled into an embankment between my old neighborhood and the woods. At its edge stood a weeping willow, with leaves that tickled the water’s surface, casting a shimmering gleam in the sun.
Some evenings I would meet my friend, who lived some streets down from me, and we would go for walks, giddy from the prospect of going somewhere by ourselves. At home, I would complain about the grandmother next door who furtively plucked mint leaves from our yard, complain about the relentless mosquitos that attacked me in the evenings when I played backyard badminton.
Alone at night, unable to sleep, I would listen to the muffled roar of the freight train that ran just beyond the pond. I would imagine myself standing before the train as it rumbled past, barely illuminated by the full moon that shone singularly in the dark violet sky. On the bus to school, I would sit looking out at the town’s low-rise brick buildings and strip malls, the neighborhood entrances lined with neatly trimmed flora bushes. The comforting familiarity of it all, of the suburb where I had lived nearly all my life, contented me in a bare and sincere way.
The older I became, the further I drifted apart from my childhood friends. The brief but awkward occasions we would see each other did little more than to highlight the adolescent retreat with which we now constrained ourselves, a manner vastly different from the carefree interactions we once shared.
I remember saying goodbye to my school friends when I moved, those with whom I was close enough to seek out in the hallways but not nearly enough to invite to my home or spend time outside of class. Sometimes I imagine myself walking through their high school, the high school I would have attended, silently observing their appearance and behavior, probably changed, perhaps matured. Mind you, never in my true physical form would I imagine myself doing this. I would only do this had I the ability to incarnate into an invisible, shapeless body that is unrecognizable, unable to be sensed.
Sometimes I wish to see how much we have grown in the absence of a shared presence, like two flowers stemming from a common root, each its own entity, all the while remaining deeply interconnected at the core.
Sometimes I imagine myself returning to my hometown, years or maybe decades later, driving under the kind blue sky, greeting the oak trees that lined the sand-colored sidewalks, the glistening pond and weeping tree, the high school I had always envisioned myself attending but never did.
Anusmara Gunturu is a high school student living in Northern Virginia. Her work has received recognition from the Scholastic Awards and has been published in Teen Writers Project Quarterly Lit Zine and Remington Review. She believes in the power of flash fiction and its ability to share thought-provoking, introspective, and resonant themes with an audience. Outside of studying and daydreaming, she enjoys reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s short stories.