My mom has been scanning some of the photos that she found after my granddad died. My granddad grew up in Pinellas County, and so did my mom and so did I, and my veins are all tied up in that ground. Like this photo, taken under the old Kapok tree, which is over 400 years old and right down the street from my mom's house now. Back then, it was still on my great grandpappy's property. By the 1960's someone had opened up a restaurant with crazy ballrooms and giant gardens. Now there's a music store there, but the Kapok tree is still standing.
All these photos of picnics in the park that was eventually my mother's backyard and where I learned to drive, of people that I've never even heard of, of beaches I went to to kiss boys. My favorite photo of my grandparents, evidence of where my love of books came from, the origin of my giant clown ears and unconscious smirk. All of it in black and white but under the same hot blue sky of my own memories. I can hear the cicadas rising in all of these photos because it's the same sound that lines my own ears.
It's why my whole relationship with the place is so complicated, I think, why I ran so far but still dream in heat and sand.
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