The Dust of Yesterday

I keep a small, wooden box filled with the broken ends of colored chalk, worn down to nubs by years of use. They are dusty, fragile things, stained with the residue of lessons long forgotten and drawings that were washed away by the first heavy rain. To hold them is to feel the weight of a time when we believed that color could change the world, or at least the grey pavement of a schoolyard. We spend our youth marking the ground, leaving trails of our presence as if we are afraid the earth might forget we were ever here. Eventually, the chalk crumbles, the rain falls, and the vibrant lines fade into the stone. We are left only with the memory of the pigment on our fingertips and the quiet realization that the most beautiful things are often the ones we cannot keep. If we could draw our lives over again, would we choose the same bright colors, or would we leave the pavement bare?

Stephanie Gillis has captured this fleeting beauty in her work titled Chalk Flower. It reminds me of those dusty nubs in my box, holding onto a memory of color before it vanishes. Does this image stir a forgotten piece of your own childhood?