Zebra Crossings

When you were young,
zebra crossings seemed like the longest roads you would ever have to take,
the longest journey you would ever have to make.
From waiting at the traffic-light,
and looking at the one opposite you,
imagining a tall, thin man being held captive,
locked up inside the striped contraption,
twiddling the dials to switch the colors.
To jumping in between the lines,
deciding whether white or black would be the lava
you were tabooed to tread on.
To noticing the red asphalt of the bicycle lane beside you glisten,
glint with star-strewn particles trapped in the ground.
But now your legs are longer; stronger,
in just three strides the road is crossed!
And on the other side of the street
you face the necessity of thinking
about the things your younger self had scoffed at
at grown-ups for having an interest in.

A Requiem to the Thoughts We’ll Never Think Again

We buried them deep in the soils of our minds.
We never held a funeral.
They’re absence went unnoticed,
Save for the smoke that came after blowing out the candle

Memories die without a deathbed,
Evaporating into oblivion.
Like machinery, that, after years of grinding,
Has stopped the irregular manufacture of an accustomed product.

Don’t bother resuscitating them;
They’ll never resurrect.
Despite repeatedly inserting the same keywords into our mental catalogue.
Their caskets are sealed with time.

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Estelle Bardot is the pen name of a music student who studies piano and composition and loves to read. Her creative nonfiction essay “A Foreign Flower” is published in the Under the Madness Magazine.