In Our Hearts

I wake up to the knock on the door. It's my friends calling me out to play in the park. To swing on the swings and play on the slide and see-saw, to climb the mango tree at the dawn of summer break. We go to school and learn our ABC's, 123's. We laugh at stupid jokes and fall in love without knowing what it means. We tease our friends in front of their crushes and gather around one lunch box every day. We write innocent love letters and ask endless questions about the little things.

The next day, when we go to school, we're taken aback when the teacher introduces the three laws of motion and the periodic table of elements. Our bags get heavier and our eyes become drowsier.

Our lives become all about tests, endless pages of important notes and quizzes. As time flies, we just try to make it one day at a time. We forget to pause and laugh or even cry.

Then, one day, I just pause for a second to look at myself in the mirror. My two pigtails become one messy bun. My eyes have become tired, I see tired dark circles and pimples of stress.

We all have time-traveled from first crushes to first breakups, from dictations in class to board exams in other schools.

Finally, we look up from our books to say goodbye. To bid farewell and remember all that we had. "We'll see each other again", we all promise. However, a part of us knows that we will see each other occasionally at the bottom of our hearts.