Pyrrhic

They closed the place I attended first and second grade. It’s a police department now, teachers and students scattered throughout the district. The chief invited me to attend training, so I drove down.

Most of it I've seen before, but this was different, being in a place where I once stood no taller than the blackboard. They lectured on fatal funnels and storming down hallways before we practiced controlled pairs while role players showered us with paintballs.

I wasn’t hit. I shot until the bolt locked back, magazine empty. My rain of Simunitions stained roleplayers head to toe in blue.

I felt no joy in victory. It’s a fight we've already lost.

Google "school fire.” Flames aren’t in the results.

After, I ignored warnings clouding my mind. Dazed, I drove to the place we used to live. I knew memories may flood in and pressure could build behind my eyes; tears would threaten me with heartache and a migraine.

Yet, I went.

I found the tiny aluminum box, the first home I knew. The street that took me there was shorter than it should have been.

Maybe nostalgia had nothing to do with my heart thundering and hands shaking. It's possible that neighborhood roads had grown tiny and insignificant because the asphalt cracked and contracted. Perhaps yards had shrunk to barely larger than the living rooms of singlewides standing feet apart from one another.

Tears never stained my beard with salty pieces of a past nowhere near forgotten. In the end, the only things that dropped were expectations.

Maybe hopes.

It's not that I'm so much bigger than that place, but growing up sometimes means getting out . . . and my work means we live in a world where some people never get to grow up at all.