A personal essay by Cassie Wood
"Only the children know what they are looking for."
I watched a different girl with her grass-stained knees and Dorito dusted fingers flitter across the grass as she gathered a buttery bouquet. The sun-fallen weeds bunched in her chubby fists. She gave her collection of starbits to her mother, sneezing. "Wow! They're lovely," her mom said, she said she is going to put them in a vase in the kitchen. My kitchen has scab-red roses from Costco. I guess I picked them out too.
I am not nostalgic for childhood innocence. But at one point in my life I exchanged my dad reading The Little Prince to me at bedtime for white noise to drown out my thoughts while I sleep. And I don’t know why.
"Only the children know what they are looking for."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince
I sat at the park reading Walt Whitman while watching a child sit alone on the swing with no one to push her.
I watched a different girl with her grass-stained knees and Dorito dusted fingers flitter across the grass as she gathered a buttery bouquet. The sun-fallen weeds bunched in her chubby fists. She gave her collection of starbits to her mother, sneezing. "Wow! They're lovely," her mom said, she said she is going to put them in a vase in the kitchen. My kitchen has scab-red roses from Costco. I guess I picked them out too.
I am not nostalgic for childhood innocence. But at one point in my life I exchanged my dad reading The Little Prince to me at bedtime for white noise to drown out my thoughts while I sleep. And I don’t know why.