We’ll remember the small moments that seemed not to matter at the time. We’ll remember the dust motes caught in after school sunbeams, cigarette smell stale in the air. We’ll remember the way that it was cool to wear baseball caps backwards, and the primary colors that dominated all senses of fashion at the time, one for each section of shirt. We’ll remember the hushed telephone tones, the whispers past doorways that we couldn’t make out or understand but which gave us a pain in our stomachs worse than the hunger that was already there. We’ll remember the green grass of summer segueing into yellow in spots in August, the broken glass skittered on sidewalks and the way the lights reflected off of them. We’ll remember the hydrants spilling and the boomboxes and the glittering lights in windows in place of stars, the starlight finally back now that there’s nothing left to interfere. We’ll remember once trusting people, of knowing our neighbors’ names and playing outside until it got dark and the street lights came on. We’ll remember real, non-canned food, and heat that isn’t radiation. We’ll remember block parties before the crops died, when grass existed, popping off bottle rockets and Roman candles and contact poppers for the kids not yet old enough to handle fire, these contained explosions that we thought were fun. We’ll remember what it was like to talk to an older person, to hear stories of times long before we were born and to believe that there would be times long after we left this Earth. We’ll remember board games on rainy indoor recess days, and running to catch ice cream trucks on sunny ones, and learning about the evolution of the species in biology class, a steady progression that seemed then to be an eternal process. We’ll remember all of the things from our childhood, and from the childhood of our planet, as we wander the desert of adulthood that we’ve created for ourselves.