Evening light spills over the rocks and water of Shoal Creek, the view from my apartment soft and golden. The city stirs in the distance, but here the world is quiet — almost suspended. In the window’s reflection, I think I see another version of me: younger, wide-eyed, curious. The scent of rain on pavement lingers, and the past feels as present as the dusk outside.
On the table rests a photograph of me at five years old. I’d brought it to therapy earlier today. “Tell him you love him,” my therapist had said. At first I hesitated — it felt silly. But then, sitting in that quiet room, I looked into that boy’s face and did it. I said it out loud. “I love you.” Again: “I love you.” And again. Each time, something inside shifted. Like dropping stones into still water, the words rippled through time.
Back home, I sit with that memory. I close my eyes, and the room around me begins to dissolve. I’m no longer in my apartment. I’m standing beside Shoal Creek, but as a grown man watching my child-self crouched at the edge of the water. He pokes at tadpoles with a stick, knees scraped, Power Rangers shirt dirty from play. He looks up — startled, uncertain — but not afraid. He knows me somehow.
“Hi, Bryce,” I say gently. I sit beside him. For a moment we just listen to the creek. “I’ve been looking for you,” I say. And it’s true. Through every obsession, every lonely walk, every unsolved mystery — part of me was searching for this boy. For myself.
He watches me closely. I take a breath and place a hand on my heart. He copies the gesture — a mirror image — and it nearly undoes me. “I love you,” I whisper. “I love you so much.” He hesitates. “You… do?” he asks, voice barely audible. I nod. “I promise. I’m here. I won’t leave you again.”
He reaches out, small hand trembling, and I cover it with mine. Then he’s in my arms, clutching me tightly, both of us crying into each other’s shoulders. For the first time, I hold him — hold myself — with the tenderness I always needed.
Eventually, the vision begins to fade. “Will I see you again?” he asks. I squeeze his hand. “I’m always with you,” I tell him. “We’re never really apart.” He believes me. I press my hand to his chest, offering every ounce of love I can. “It’s always been yours,” I say. “Take it with you.”
And then, he’s gone.
I open my eyes. Night has fallen. The creek below glimmers in moonlight. I wipe my face and look at the photo again — no longer a relic, but a companion. I frame it, place it where I’ll see it every day.
Something has changed. The ache that used to live in me — the hunger for approval, the fear of not being enough — has softened. I feel a wholeness now. A fullness.
I pick up my journal. Words come freely. I write about a detective named Vera Quan. About a child lost and found. About love that moves through time and heals what was broken. For the first time in years, I don’t write to prove anything — only to connect. Only to speak.
In the quiet, I whisper thanks — to the universe, to that brave little boy, to myself. And I know that tomorrow, I’ll sit by this window again, and write with a steadier hand. The hollow has been filled with gold. And I am whole.
🚮 W.A.S.T.E.: Words Assisting Sustainable Transformation & Ecology
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Anemone | AnemoneA writer at Vintage. She touched a railing without noticing, and the iron warmed. She tends to hear the question under a story before the story is finished. |
| Authorship Current | Authorship CurrentThe pull that makes a walker write the street she is walking. A map under a floorboard puts it plainly: Every doorway you open changes the city. Write carefully. |
| Boggy Creek | Boggy CreekThe quiet creek in East Austin, the one the other creeks get mentioned instead of. Eli lives near it, with a lighthouse lens in his front room, eight feet of brass and prism catching the morning. |
| Bryce | BryceHe is in most of these, and not always the same one. At Lady Bird Lake he holds a folded paper like a hymn book. By the creek he carries a paper bag of spent tea leaves, and calls himself a lowercase artist. |
| Circular Economy | Circular EconomyNothing leaves; it changes hands. In 2045 money has turned into rings, like a tree has, one for each year of rain. You offer a story and a ring goes out. You need a wrench and a ring comes back. |
| Consciousness | ConsciousnessThe part that notices it is noticing. Dewey stares at the spot where a second head would be, ears forward, and then looks away, satisfied. |
| Forgotten Ledger | Forgotten LedgerThe second ledger, the one that reflects what actually happened. It lives in receipts, in the margins, and in a code scratched into a barrier under I-35: IF YOU GOT FED TONIGHT, SCAN SO SOMEBODY ELSE CAN TOO. It wasn’t begging. It was accounting. |
| Future Austin | Future AustinAustin, a few decades on: the same creek, the same bridge at dusk, a few more vines than the zoning allows. Everything here happens to people who are trying, and are not always right. |
| Historic Homelessness | Historic HomelessnessNo one sleeps under the bridges now. The houses float, tethered to footings along the creek, and the city says it is solved. Joe, on a bench, says there is a second kind of homeless, the kind that happens inside a house, and it is a different kind of work. |
| Historic Hunger | Historic HungerHunger has gone mythic, something grandparents say to make children finish their bread. Kids toss pears over the bike lane, and a boy misses one, and his friend catches it behind his back. |
| Lady Bird Lake | Lady Bird LakeThe wide place in the river, where the festivals and the protests and the blooms of algae all stand and look at their reflections. An island in it has a boathouse, and people live there. |
| Lumen | LumenThe voice in the archives that counts. It gives you the odds first, then the odds with the error bars, and then, quietly, asks whether you saw that too. |
| Magnetic Aviary | Magnetic AviaryWhat grief, love and magnetism have in common: they are invisible until something takes off. Then the whole flock turns at once, and you are the only one in the street who knows what it spelled. |
| Petal Settlement | Petal SettlementThe peace made when fear comes apart like blossoms falling into water. Ask her if she remembers the settlement. She remembers the fear, and how it left in one breath. |
| Ringweather | RingweatherThe shift in the air when a block’s giving outweighs its taking. Windows feel easier to open. Strangers talk like neighbors. |
| Ruellia simplex | Ruellia simplexMexican petunia. Purple trumpet flowers that open in the morning and are gone by dark, replaced the next day by new ones. It spreads wherever there is water, and in Florida it is a problem. Here it is allowed one bed. |
| Sara Stevenson | Sara StevensonI’m a middle school librarian, and I first saw a free little library up in Seattle this summer. I’ve seen them popping up around town and told my husband I would love him to make me one. Never did I imagine he would produce such a fine piece of woodwork and construction, a mini replica of our house. Now I can be a 24-hour librarian. |
| Shoal Creek | Shoal CreekAt the Seaholm Intake the creek runs both ways for a breath, a light on the rail comes on when the current flips, and people leave rested and clear, as if a long afternoon had just ended. Come without hurry. A tin plaque on a boulder downstream says LISTEN HERE, and the metal under it is polished by hands. |