Through the Fog

Tag: cousins

  • The Last Inning

    When we were kids,

    the world was small enough

    to fit in a backyard

    and big enough

    to hold every dream we had.

    You were Jose Canseco,

    power in your swing,

    confidence loud and fearless.

    I was Pudge Rodriguez,

    steady behind the plate,

    trusting you to bring it home.

    Same dirt on our shoes.

    Same sunburned afternoons.

    Same belief that if we played long enough,

    nothing would ever change.

    We didn’t talk about the future.

    We just assumed it would include each other—

    like cousins always do,

    like best friends always promise

    without saying the words.

    Somewhere along the way,

    the seasons stopped lining up.

    Different paths.

    Different lives.

    Different versions of who we had to become

    just to survive.

    Now years sit between us

    like unopened letters.

    No fights.

    No big goodbye.

    Just silence that grew

    while we weren’t looking.

    I still think of you

    when memories get soft—

    when laughter used to come easy,

    when belonging didn’t feel complicated.

    I still remember us

    before adulthood taught us

    how to drift.

    You don’t know me anymore.

    Maybe you don’t even think of me.

    But I still carry that kid

    who stood at the plate

    trusting his cousin

    to be there.

    And even now,

    part of me hopes

    that somewhere inside you,

    you remember us too—

    not as strangers,

    not as silence,

    but as two kids

    on the same team,

    believing we were unstoppable.

  • The Bonds That Last

    Carrying a strong bond with the people I grew up with is one of the great things in my life—but sometimes it feels like a double-edged blade. They knew me before the chaos, before the bottles, before the nights I couldn’t crawl out of. They remember a version of me I can barely picture anymore. And standing beside them, I feel the weight of who I’ve lost.

    There’s something both comforting and painful about people who’ve seen you from the beginning. They carry memories of me laughing without effort, dreaming without limits. When they look at me now, I wonder if they notice the cracks, or if they pretend not to. I can’t hide from them completely—they know too much. But I also can’t always let them all the way in, because the shame clings too tightly.

    Being with them is like touching the surface of another life, one I can’t fully step back into. The laughter still comes, but it feels borrowed. The warmth is there, but it flickers. These bonds keep me tethered, yet sometimes they also remind me how far I’ve drifted from the shore we all started on together.

    And maybe that’s why I cling to them so hard—because even when I feel like a ghost of myself, they’re proof that I was once alive. They are the mirror that shows me not just who I am, but who I used to be. And some days, that’s harder to face than the loneliness itself.