The Weight of a Childhood

I keep a small, rusted tin box in my desk drawer, filled with the smooth, grey pebbles my brother and I collected from the riverbank when we were children. They are cold to the touch, heavy with the weight of afternoons that felt like they would never end. We did not know then that time is a thief, or that the places we inhabit eventually outgrow our ability to hold them. We simply gathered what we could reach, believing that if we kept enough of the earth in our pockets, we would never truly be lost. Now, those stones are all that remain of a landscape that has long since been paved over. We spend our lives trying to build a shelter against the inevitable erosion of our own history, clutching at the remnants of a world that is constantly slipping through our fingers. What happens to the stories we are no longer here to tell?

Eshank Kanojia has captured this fragile sense of belonging in his work titled Dally Day. It reminds me that even in the hardest places, there is a pulse of life that refuses to be erased. Does this image make you want to reach out and hold onto something, too?