The Path of Returning Light

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There’s a dirt path in the woods that looks like it was drawn by a lonely pencil trying to remember what straight lines felt like.
The morning sunlight lies across it in long yellow slices, like someone tried to make a sandwich out of brightness and forgot the bread.

I went back there today.
People say you can’t return to childhood, but people say a lot of things because it keeps them from having to try.

The trees were doing their usual tree things — standing around being tall and pretending they weren’t listening — but the light was different. It had that shy, early-morning personality, the kind that apologizes even while it’s illuminating everything.

I followed the path until I found footprints. Bare ones. Small.
It’s strange seeing a version of yourself walking ahead of you like that — like time got bored and doubled back.

The footprints led me to a clearing I swear never existed before, which is something clearings do when they know you need one.

And there she was:
me at seven years old, sitting cross-legged in the grass like she was waiting for a bus that ran only once every lifetime.

She looked up and waved, casual, like we’d just bumped into each other at the grocery store between the canned peaches and the regrets.

“You dropped these,” she said.

In front of her were little pieces of my life I’d misplaced over the years:
the clay animals I made in grade school,
the impossible machines I drew on notebook corners,
the secret belief that being alive could be something more than just clocking in and clocking out.

“I held onto them,” she said. “Just in case you ever came back.”

I sat down beside her and the sunlight folded around us like a friendly napkin. For a while neither of us talked. The world was quiet in that old, patient way it used to be, before adulthood started pounding on the door with both fists.

When I finally stood up, she stayed sitting there, smiling at me the way only kids can — like the future doesn’t have teeth.

“Come back anytime,” she said.
“I’m not going anywhere.”

Walking away, I realized she was right.
Some parts of us don’t leave.
They just wait in the woods with our forgotten brightness, hoping we’ll remember the way back.