I was born into a revolution of technology
that shot the world forwards
And I’ve responded with reminiscence of the past.
I can remember the green convex screens
where I played the games
that taught me colors and words,
so the age of the touch screen drew a hard line through my childhood.
This, paired with the veil that youth puts over all memories,
Created a warm, familiar image in the back of my mind
of a place I’ll never reach again.
Childhood memories are always like looking into a box
full of things you’ll never experience again
but the hackneyed plight of the millennial
is seeing so many familiarities
dead and gone within a matter of years.
We have every day of our lives
documented and accounted for
but only back to a certain year.
Every year before then: fuzzy memories,
fuzzy feelings.
We don’t expect solemnity
at the funerals we throw for Furbies and flip-phones
but we’ll still mourn in our own way.
And I can imagine,
in the future,
the URL of a tweet
announcing the birth of a baby
kept in a virtual safe of family heirlooms;
Spotify playlists will be a musical curation of one’s entire life,
and what we’ve always treated as
fleeting, insignificant, and less-than
will have an air of permanence.
There will be generations
not familiar with the transition we exist in
because they won’t know
of any other way.