Hands of Salt

Every time I look back at my life, I look in a certain way. Through this retroactive lens, different events can take on different meanings for any number of reasons. Maybe I string a bunch of travel stories together. Maybe I see clearly my social failures and my academic triumphs, while my social triumphs and my academic failures remain foggy and forgotten. I wrote a poem about a girl I was in love with, once. I reread it once I stopped loving her, and it stopped being my poem. My life changes every time I look through the retroactive lens, but I refuse to think that the pile of experiences I’m standing on can change, enlarge, or disappear. So I keep looking back, hoping that my life will stay put, but it changes shape and color as if through a churning kaleidoscope that I grip with hands of salt.