Nostalgia
[in poetry]
There are days I want to stay in nostalgia
to remember innocence
and loud bursts of laughter.
On days like this, I feelmy heart exploding from
happiness and yearning
for days long gone.
I’ve always been a sucker for the past.
I remember when taxes was a foreign word
and my days were just filled with
academics so taxing my friends and I had to
go out and spend countless hours
at a nearby Starbucks talking about
our little lives and grandeur loves
and pretending to study.
I was studying, really.
We were listening to songs that
mirrored our struggles—
boys that we were too good for
parents we barely understood
now, we do
and a university that was the
end all and be all.
Now we're all living different lives
with husbands and children and
careers we were then just pursuing
or careers we didn't see ourselves in
careers dictated by society
longing for the simple days
listening to old songs
remembering how we reveled back then
how we lived whole heartedly
nostalgia our one constant friend out of it all.20.11.2024 - Written after hearing a song I used to listen to on repeat. My friends and I would sing to it while we studied. We talked about nothing and everything. Life seemed simple back then.
Me, taken by a friend after I woke them all up to see the glorious sunrise at 5:30am in Baler, Aurora in the Philippines.