The Weight of a Fence

I remember a boy named Elias who used to spend his afternoons in the alley behind our apartment block. He wasn’t playing, not really. He was just testing the height of the brick walls, seeing how far he could stretch his small frame before gravity pulled him back to the pavement. There is a specific kind of gravity that settles on a child when they are left to their own devices for too long. It isn’t just boredom; it is a quiet, heavy realization that the world is vast and they are currently standing on the outside of it. You see it in the way they grip a ledge or lean against a gate, as if they are trying to hold the structure up, or perhaps trying to convince the world to let them in. It is a lonely sort of strength, the kind that grows in the gaps between other people’s lives. Do you remember the first time you realized you were entirely responsible for your own entertainment?

Lavi Dhurve has captured this exact feeling in the image titled Vijay. It is a quiet, honest look at the solitude that sometimes finds us when we are young. Does this remind you of a moment from your own childhood?