As spring creeps around the corner, I find myself reminiscing on past memories. This is why last Monday, I decided to voyage outside my house and walk, for the first time in years, to my old elementary school. The sun was making its descent toward the horizon, signaling the end of another day, and it will continue to do so, signaling another month, then a year and so on and forever until I’m not there to witness it. As it crept lower, nostalgia rang high through its confinement in my brain’s storage closet. I was reminded once again of the fleetingness of childhood; a bleak playscape missing its inhabitants, missing me. Black top hiding old custard spills from ice cream socials that seem like they were eons ago. This place is a mini time capsule for the beginning of me. My first art class. My first crush. My first friend. But now this playground calls for smoking rituals over hopscotch; drunken stargazing over lemonade. And I’m okay with that.

Staff Photographer Megan Ocelnik can be reached at mocelnik@umich.edu