LITERARY WORKS
B y : J u s t i n a T o r r e s
So instead of wasting my time reveling in a world I wish to be in, I have taken to re-exploring my house to uncover what reality was like all this time.
Quarantine The world continues to rage on, and for many of us, we fear what else this year has to offer.
During my quarantine routine— a cycle of waking up, attending online classes, eating meals, working out (yes, I do work out now), doing homework, and sleeping— I often stumble upon different things that trigger nostalgia. So instead of wasting my time reveling in a world I wish to be in, I have taken to reexploring my house to uncover what reality was like all this time.
Although I’ve encountered these things in my past, discovering them in the present gives them a new meaning. I’m quite surprised by how vivid my memory appears noon and the summer heat had to be as I find these old items reached its peak as I cleared out (probably because I’m a sucker for every single item found inside my sentimental things). Nostalgia is a drawers. Amidst the dusty heap of feeling that we grow into and I old school books and broken school believe that it gives us the kits, I found a small jar filled with a opportunity to reflect on a time variety of colored papers new that feels like it existed so long meaning. ago. Especially for me, a senior of the graduating batch of 2021 who Out of curiosity, I sat on my squeaky, spent what will be fifteen years in blue chair, and opened the jar. Southville, these hidden treasures Inside, I found papers of all sorts: surely brought me back to the ripped notebook pages passed times I long to be in once again.
It’s funny how I couldn’t place a specific memory or even name the particular feeling associated with the during the middle of class or those “give this paper to someone you want to get close with”
strips handed out during the first days of school.
time I had received that apology note. But what I do remember is the person who gave it to me.
The Jar of Notes Some time in April, I finally
But there was one specific piece of paper that caught my attention. The words were written with black ink on a very tiny fragile sheet of bond paper with torn edges. “I’m sorry for stepping on your foot.”
decided to thoroughly clean out It’s funny how I couldn’t place a my room instead of just sweeping specific memory or even name the the floor. It was already the afterparticular feeling associated with the