Eighteen
From the bay, a light fog rolled in. The tower, the gate – all white beneath
a thin veil of the e summer mist. He didn’t feel a day past his childhood,
yet there it was – ordained by law and seared on his license: the
impression of adulthood.
Just a number, he thought. One two-digit number that, like himself, was
so torn between naivety and responsibility, that upon its tail, it held so
tightly to the cherished marker of his teenage years.
From a distance, carefree laughter of a young child leaped across the
dewy air, tickling the edges of his ear. He heard it – the imagination,