Memory — Kevin Tyrone McMillion Jr.

It was a time of innocence, As I walked in the summer breeze, Sunlight spilling like honey across the sidewalks, The smell of pizza and garlic knots drifting lazily through the air, Each scent a thread pulling me back to simpler days. When a memory was alive, Not a ghost, not a shadow, but something breathing beside me, We heard the symphonies of cars on the road, Their engines singing like distant, familiar choirs, Church bells chiming through the neighborhood, Marking the hours, the sacred rhythm of when we must return, A gentle authority that felt like care rather than restraint. It was a time where I was free, Soaring like birds in the sky, Flapping our wings with all our might, Laughing as if gravity itself had forgotten to hold us down. But man was never meant to fly, And the world, once a canvas of light and sound, Now presses in with the weight of memory. The traffic that once hummed a casual tune Now crashes like screams of horror into my ears, And the church bells that once guided our steps Now toll relentlessly, A mournful echo of your final moment, A reminder that innocence, once lived, Cannot return—but only haunt, Beautiful and terrible, Like the memory of flight we were never meant to sustain.