The Stories

The stories have been floating in my head for more than a decade now, gently tap-tap-tapping against my skull, calling to be let out. Memories swim in my mind, drifting down the river of my bloodstream into the fathomless cavern of my soul, echoing against the walls their unrecorded words. They are the stories of my family, of love and laughter, sorrow and pain. They are the oral histories passed down to me from my mother and father, my aunts and uncles; the nights sitting around the dining room table with the grown-ups, listening with a quiet smile as they reminisced with each other all the adventures of their own childhoods, laughing in to the night, me grinning because these grown-ups were mine. They are the tales of the grandparents, the cousins and nieces and nephews. The stories tell of the lives of my family; family lost to me through the ages of time and distance of land and sea, as well as those closest to me.

They clammer to get out lest they be lost forever.