PitchBlue

As a kid, I had a thing for garlands.

So my family and friends used to bring me some as gifts. 

Those are still safe in my old backpack: some as good as new and others broken.

A friend once made a simple drawing for me.

Honestly, it isn’t that great a drawing but folded twice, it rests somewhere on one of my drawers still.

I used a pencil that didn’t need to be sharpened but refilled, for the first time when I was in the 8th grade, I suppose.

I think I lost the first lead refills box, while the second one–though empty–is intact inside an old purse.

In 9th grade, I went on a school trip to hilly regions of Nepal. Someone brought pine leaves into the bus and gave them to me as we were ready to resume our journey after a break of a couple of minutes. 

A few of those leaves are sandwiched between pages of one of the oldest diaries I own.

I didn’t know how Jacaranda seed pods looked like until my brother showed me one when he came home on a holiday once.

That pod is in the upper most pocket of my old school bag.

Have you ever kept the wrapping papers from gifts or the petals that came off of flowers accompanying those gifts?

Well, somewhere inside a plastic bag, I have some from my birthdays.

I have some magnets too, one or two stones, a few coins, some more leaves, pens, some random plant seeds, cards, and many more things I will have to search my room to remember the names of.

Nowadays, I don’t really understand why I keep all these things nor can I bring myself to throw them away like time threw me off a cliff of childhood down to the depression of youth.