childhood memories

December 13, 2025

/ HJ / Leave a comment

the problem with having dreams
about places and people you haven’t seen
in some time, is that they all tend to
mesh
and merge
together, becoming one big amalgamation of
The Past™
or This Point In My Life™
or Anyone And Anything I Haven’t Thought Of In A While™

and though i appreciate
that my brain is constantly churning
even at night
and never lets anything
go,
i do wish the memories were
clearer,
so i could actually contact
whoever my subconscious
is missing
at any given point
and actually reach out to them
and say
hello

December 1, 2025

/ HJ / Leave a comment

it is december
it is december
i’m allowing myself these
twenty-five to thirty-one days
of holiday feeling

[perhaps it’s a mistake,
but,
in nyc i believe
i am not beholden to old memories —
this city makes new ones all the time
and i can learn from all of that
and all of those
and have an nyc holiday season
instead of suffering from memories
of midwest christmases
long since passed]

November 21, 2025

/ HJ / Leave a comment

the morning poetry
still in the morning
still in the morning
as my father waters all his plants
and as the puppy gets into trouble
in the kitchen
the kitchen of my childhood
which only looks half like it did
in my childhood
and i have already scoped through the dozens
perhaps hundreds
of articles of clothing i still have in this house
to see if anything
still slaps

and now my father is done with the plants
and is playing with the puppy
like he had promised her
and i can see into the dining room
as they play
and play and play
and i think it’s
almost
as good as me bringing him
a grandchild
to play with

[maybe
maybe
maybe when our country
isn’t trying to literally kill
anyone who isn’t a
cis
straight
white
upper class
christian
man

maybe then
we’ll bring him one]

May 5, 2025

/ HJ / Leave a comment

sometimes the yearning gets to be too much
and the decision is either to
delve deep
and inevitably find
that even as i try
to live in the memories of the moments gone by
i can’t even remember them
accurately
fully
or, sometimes,
at all

or

just pretend like i’m putting off that analysis
for another day
and put it of
and put it off
and wait
and wait
and wait for the day when
i will be able to remember accurately and fully
because of magic
or time travel
or something else entirely
[even though i know
full well
the first stanza of this poem
will never fully be fixed
so i prefer to live in this one
where the possibility
still
exists]

June 23, 2024

/ HJ / Leave a comment

summer is for hot hot sun
and sticky nights
too much sunscreen making not much difference
in the plight of red faces and needing shady spaces
and ice cream melting all over your hands
and lazy moments where the clock seems to stand
exactly still for longer than a second
a minute
an hour
and looking out over some green or body of water
can remind you of a moment of your childhood
or make memories of cartwheels and babies
in a town you’ve never visited
and may never come back to again
but that’s june for you,
that’s what summer is meant to do.

May 1, 2022

/ HJ / Leave a comment

it’s gonna
be
May

the millennials shout
and cheer
for one of the few moments
of the year
the dopamine is high
when we think about time

passing.

last night the ice cream truck
drove down our street again
creeping along at a snail’s pace
at dusk
and it struck me
how easily
fun and bright childhood joys
can turn to nightmare fuel
with one or two
subtle
adjustments,
and i just
wanted to remember
getting ice cream from the truck
every
single
visit to Grandmama’s
but instead my mind went to
scary places
(and also to mundanity,
which in itself
is a nightmare all it’s own)
and why
must overthinking
do all this?

but it’s okay

because:

it’s
gonna
be
May.
which means less cold weather
(cross your fingers and toes
and arms and legs
because this spring has been
so
damn
cold
since Louka got sick)
and perhaps more thunderstorms
(have ‘April showers bring May/flowers’
always been slightly off,
or are the spring storms actually
moving
towards happening in May
as another subtle/obvious effect
of the changing of our climate now?)
and perhaps a more relaxed and reasonable me
(because of more time outside,
and extended sunlight in the sky,
and potential adventurous trips for us elsewhere
or for faraway friends towards where we reside)

so,
May,
go ahead and happen
because i could use the damn dopamine.

March 14, 2022

/ HJ / Leave a comment

i don’t have
many memories
from childhood

an iconic moment here

a rush of emotion there

the things that i did all summer
bundled into one specific instance

mostly
{like my thoughts}
i have
vibes

generally
my memories
consist of the
aura
of childhood
of carefree freedom
imagination
the feeling of being
too big for that tiny body
to old for this world
(or maybe too big for this small world
and too old for that young body)

and as my memories age out
from childhood
to tween,
pre-teen,
teenage-hood,
young-adulthood
the memories get darker
angstier
and even the vibes
are less clear

the older i got
the swirlier the emotions became

until something happened
and i feel like i burst forth
from a cauldron of muck
and murky emotions
and became fully me

[when did that happen?
when i hit my stride in my early/mid 20’s?
when i chopped off all my hair
and started caring less
about what i was ‘supposed to’ be?
when i finally birthed myself out of the
strong-arm of academia?
when i met kip?
when i figured out i was non-binary?
when i started feeling more like i did
at 9?
(even though, emotionally, i do still have times/days/stints
of 19-year-old me?)]

memories are fickle
and i feel as though mine might be
fickler than most

but hey,
the vibes of my childhood,
overall,
they were simply
exquisite.