Temporary Architecture

The wind howls, threatening to knock over the small buildings made of pure brick. They have stood here since long before I was even conceived, and now I’ve crossed the country to enter their space. Their signs have faded under years of weather, while I arrive in new clothes and a personality still freshly stitched together.

My life has become a ritual, unfolding alongside people whose histories remain invisible to me. I run my fingers along the surfaces around me, hoping that someday their crevices will feel familiar. I hold my breath before entering the old buildings, letting the space settle around me. I am newly furnished—polished, unweathered, carrying a scent barely born.

I am modern, I am contemporary—a composite of all I have been, carrying my past experiences within me, just as the space around me carries its own layers of history. I have drifted until I hit the sides, and now I am a patient wave waiting for the rest of my journey to unfold. This place is temporary; my presence here is not meant to last. The buildings, though, will endure, silently awaiting their eventual decay. And when they fall, who will be there to see what remains?

One day I’ll leave—not soon, but inevitably. I’ll keep speaking to people whose faces have already blurred together, pushing myself out of my sanctuary to satisfy the world around me. I’ve spent hours constructing an outer shell, brick by brick, knowing it will crumble as soon as I walk away. There was never enough glue to hold it together, yet I built it anyway. I try to leave traces in places I know won’t last, if only to anchor myself to the moment before it slips past me.

But even if nothing holds, I’ll know that for a while I stood among these older things, learning how to inhabit a place that was never mine to keep. And when I finally step away, I hope I’ll remember how it felt to be small beside these structures, to be the newest thing in a place older than my name. 

The Docks