The Sunken Cities

Chapter 3

We were kids back then, you and I. It's so weird to look back at the pictures. Not only because I wonder what you'd look like today, but I marvel over how much I didn't know you. Sure, we lived next to eachother for 7 years and yes, we played together almost every day, but I feel like I never really knew you. I see a stranger in those photographs. One where we're in your treehouse. One where we both got an icecream cone with fours scoops that I later threw back up. One on the beach. Our sandcastle. One of me trying to get you to revise your French vocabulary list. Your dad loved photography. Said we were growing up so fast and he didn't want to forget any of it. Everything went in the big albums in the shelfs next to the CD collection. Back when people had CD's and we got scolded if we dropped one. Now we drop all our CD's when we shatter our phone screen.

A picture of you in the bath. One of the burned christmas cookies. One of you crying over your first elementary school girlfriend. Your father documented everything. You never liked the camera. Always tried to pull a face and discourage him, but it forced him to become a true paperazto. He took the most beautiful candids. You looking trying to look over the balcony railing of a hotel in Wales. You bend over a piece of paper, hands covered in marker ink. You bend over your first playstation.

They say you can never truely understand your parents untill you become one. I'll never understand how much he loved and still loves you. You were probably too young to see. He loved you like you'd be packing your bags for uni the next morning. He loved you like he was going to loose you. Maybe he knew. Maybe that's one of those parents things I have yet to understand. Maybe a parent feels when it is time for their child to leave. Or maybe he just liked taking pictures.