A faded photograph from my childhood shines brighter than any possible future. The longing so palpable if you told me I could put it all back together I might actually try. Step one; recover every book, thread and morsel given away. Step two; Cure my loved ones of age and burdens of time and dress them like the turn of the millennial icons they have become. Step three; resurrect those who have passed beyond and more so, recover their souls from Gods burning hands. Step four; clone eight year old self and give me only thirty minutes to explain to him how vital this moment, this very iota of time is the best of his life. And even if it isn’t he’ll remember it that way. Reluctantly I will let me run away from me knowing that nothing I’ve said will stick out in his mind. But upon further thought I realize that was exactly what was meant to happen.

     The best is yet to come this I must believe as the new youth tears gashes through the canvas we’ve painted of our teenage triumphs. We did it best after all but then again, isn’t that what our fathers said? What our mothers said? As the memories of a time without grey passes behind us like a car moving on a highway in the opposite direction we forget the fires; the wild fires of our hearts filled with sunlight and amoral purpose. Perhaps that is what we miss most, the assurity of our minds married with the will of our spotless hearts. Undefeated souls bending the will of the world to our means; as fleeting and shallow as they may be. I can tell you that God does not count the sins of the young, only when we start to believe he does; he does.

     Place an immortal being in a world of marionettes and he will soon start to think and move as they do. Their minds blister and spin so shall his, their strings bind them to the limits of matter and he will believe he has strings that can be bound. Tell him he is wood and clay and he will do as wood and clay does, even when it returns to which it came. But how long can the puppet masters convince a living thing it is dead? No longer than three beats of a humming birds heart.

     The nature of putting things back together goes against the nature of our material world. The essence of time is that when applied to a realm of matter will force it back to its basic elements. The Janitor is the greatest heretic of nature’s law, yet the dirty work they do is forced upon them out of necessity; like the slave soldiers of old they reverse the thing that would one day set the world to rights.

     So the photograph remains just a chemical reaction, and the resurrection of a life gone by is for now impossible. And the old cliché rings true, you can never go home again. But however imagination always trumps the impossible, so let’s pick up the box of holy crayons and draw a masterpiece of shit on the walls of God’s house.