I Am

• Alyssa Carney, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2016

I am the present, that includes the past but hopes for the future.
I am a part of my parents, the love of my life and the people around me that I share with my mother.
The thrill and rush of excitement from my father, as I zoom across a wave and it encloses me in a barrel.
In the distance there are large groups of boys playing football.
Girls skipping and laughing.
Models in magazines that eat once a day.
Watching the clock tick each second, minute, hour and watch the days fly past.
That is all I see.
On the beach, the waves crumble and crash.
The wind silently blowing in my ear.
The soft rustle of the leaves towering over me.
The rest of the world holding back information, rumors and whispers.
That is all I hear.
The world collapsing beneath me.
The rooms are becoming smaller.
Life is now a flash, one day passes as the next starts.
The refreshing tastes of watermelons and grapes.
The crusty, sandy, sunkissed hair crunching in my hands.
That is all I feel and taste.
Catching my first wave and standing up.
My fifth birthday where I was a princess.
Hiding in the clothes racks at the shops from Mum.
Standing in-front of the camera. Posing on the last day of Kindergarten and thinking that I was old.
That is all I remember.
YCDI, the ‘you can do it’ program.
Listen to your parents.
Don't look down.
That is all I've been taught.
Secrets, engraved into my skin.
Occasionally falling off, like a scab on my knee.
That is all I think.
I am all of these things of my past and now is the present that is reaching towards the stars to find...The Future