My nostalgia is a queen-size mattress on the floor, two pillows and a blanket tossed about, the steady drone of a box fan threading through the room. It is a late-August morning, the soft caress of sunlight stretching, leaving bands of warmth where it evades the bars outside our first-floor window.

I am seven. One week detached from a hectic twenty-four hours in the middle seat and nine and three quarters on a clock. Three weeks until the start of second grade—of color without a ‘u’ and alphabets that will swallow my name whole.

But none of that matters now because existence is interstitial. A fleeting moment between two lives, without want or worry or weight. Even the sickeningly sweet allure of Cocoa Puffs and Saturday-morning cartoons is but a distant desire. To sleep is not a sin and to laze is to listen.

I am twenty-four. Tenuously hanging on to the throes of youth as twenty-five towers on the threshold. When my friends ask me about happiness, this moment from almost two decades ago is the only one that comes to mind.