Through the Fog

Tag: nostalgia

  • The Flowers in the Vase

    The flowers in the vase are still beautiful, even as they begin to die.

    Their colors have softened, their edges curled inward — as if holding on to what little life remains. Every day they grow a little quieter, but somehow, they still make the room feel alive.

    There’s something haunting about beauty that’s temporary. You can see the way time touches it — gently, but inevitably. The petals fall, one by one, and yet I can’t bring myself to throw them away. Maybe it’s because they remind me that even endings can be beautiful.

    Sometimes I think love is like that — the flowers in the vase.

    We keep it close even after it’s faded, because letting go feels like erasing what once made us feel alive. We hold on to the memory of its bloom, even as it wilts in front of us.

    But maybe that’s what makes it real. The fact that it doesn’t last. The way it hurts to watch beauty fade — that’s proof that it mattered. That it was alive.

    And when I look at those flowers, I don’t see loss.

    I see the softness of something that once thrived, the quiet surrender of something that loved the sunlight so much it stayed open even as the light disappeared.

    Maybe beauty isn’t in the bloom after all.

    Maybe it’s in the staying — the way we keep something long after it’s gone, just to remember how it once made us feel.

  • 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.