A forgotten bag of sweaty clothes becomes an unexpected portal to the summer of my fifteenth year. What begins as an unpleasant chore transforms into a profound reminder that memory isn’t just stored in our minds. Sometimes it’s archived within us, waiting for the right scent to unlock a version of ourselves we thought was gone forever.
Tag Archives: nostalgia
The Cr’apple
Some lurked in closets. Others scratched at bedroom windows during summer storms, fed by half-heard conversations and imaginations running far ahead of reason. The Cr’apple is the story of one such creature, and the quiet revelation decades later that transformed a family tree into a family legend.
Ghost Runner on Third
There were never quite enough kids to fill every position, so imagination did the rest. Ghost Runner on Third is a tribute to sandlot baseball, unwritten childhood rules, and the quiet code of honor forged on long summer afternoons behind a weathered barn, where friendship always mattered more than keeping score.
Potsy Gopher
Potsy Gopher is the story of a childhood imaginary friend who felt every bit as real as the world around him. Born from Saturday morning cartoons, spinning vinyl, shortwave radios, and basement adventures, he became a collaborator in wonder, a defender against shadows, and a companion through the analog landscapes of youth. Though time eventually carried him away, some friendships never truly disappear. They live on in memory, imagination, and the dreams that time cannot betray.
Analog Girl
“Analog Girl” steps outside the childhood lens of Analog Patience and into the present, exploring what it means to navigate a world where everything is instant, connected, and endlessly available. Through her resistance, frustration, and eventual return to something more internal, this piece reflects on the quiet value of imagination in an age that rarely asks us to wait.
Sometimes the most vivid images aren’t on a screen at all.
Worlds Best Mom
A dream, a hallway, and a simple sign made decades ago converge into something far greater than memory. In this deeply personal reflection, a son revisits the morning of his mother’s passing and discovers that love doesn’t end, it transforms. Mom isn’t gone, and she’s not in heaven, at least not one heaven. Her immortality lives in moments of lucidity, in flashes of presence that break through the ordinary. She moves beyond the confines of a single place, becoming something wider, something constant. Through shifting light, blurred voices, and a quiet realization, “World’s Greatest Mom” becomes less a childhood declaration and more an enduring truth. She is everywhere. She is everything. And in that, she is more alive now than ever.
Calling All Stations
A boy in a cellar, a man at the dial, and a signal that never quite resolves. This poem explores radio as a bridge across distance and time, shrinking the world while chasing away the loneliness of childhood and the deeper isolation of adulthood.
Wonderment- Revisted
A reflective spoken-word essay on childhood wonder, nostalgia, and the quiet work of reclaiming imagination as adults during the holiday season.
A Penny for Your Memory
As the penny is finally decommissioned, its small copper life lingers on—in luck, childhood, and memory.
Mannino Acid 