I look up from the boring school book.

Just a couple more pages, I tell myself, and you’re done with final book of High School.

I swivel my chair around and look out over my backyard.

18 years I had looked out of this window. 18 years I had played in this back yard. And soon when I look up from my work, I would hopefully be seeing a different setting: The lush green trees and old bricks of Williamsburg.

18 years had passed.

18 vastly, short years.

I looked around the yard. That patio wasn’t there at first, but that crooked tree was. I used to climb up and jump off of it as if I wear jumping out of an airplane. And the play set used to stand there. I would swing for what seemed like days, soaring through the sky like a bird freed at last. There’s the shed that my dad built. I remember there was a week where I would climb up there and read a book or just stare out over the yield behind the yard and be content to do just that. And there’s one of the sticks that I would yield as a ninja or a knight or a super cool spy kid or whatever my fancy was. Any my bike, oh I would ride around the neighborhood imagining that if I hit a magical button it would transform into a pod that would fly me to the moon.

The memories I had in this yard, in this house. The laughing, crying, fighting, imagining, thinking, dreaming.

I still dream like a kid, but its harder to dream once you’ve known reality.

I look down at the book in my hands.

I so badly wanted to go to college, but at the same time, I don’t. I want to stay in this backyard forever. I want to imagine and dream without reality crashing in.

Like Peter Pan, I don’t want to grow up.

18 years

18 vastly, short years.