I turned the corner and there it was ─ the same moss-covered statue I’ve passed at least four times now. Just laughing at me. It knows I’m lost. I’ve refused to let this maze get the best of me, but I feel like I’ve been trying to escape for years. I’m almost ready to give up.
I pushed forward, this time with new knowledge of the path before me. There was the T-shaped junction, go left there. The four-way intersection, go straight. I turned down nearly 100 corners I knew weren’t dead ends.
But it didn’t matter. There in front of me, for the fifth time, was the same statue marking my unchanged progress in finding a way out of here.
My head in my hands, I turned my back to the unsympathetic sculpture. I was finally prepared to give up. And that’s when I noticed a different, yet familiar path.
Behind me, in the direction I came from to first meet the statue, was an opened door. Inside were my memories, old friends and times from my childhood that I cherish. They were playing out right in front of me, beckoning me to come back and experience them all over again.
I felt their warmth wash over me in a wave of nostalgia. I could relive my first bike ride, my first kiss, my entire youth.
Or I could journey forward, again, and into the unknown.
The idea of going back to relive the magic of life was enticing. But I’d been there. Done that. It was like spending years building a sand castle just to duplicate the effort on an identical sand castle.
I bid a fond farewell to the old days and continued on, resolute in my conviction to find a way out of this damn maze.
🔬📖 Microfiction entry for 12.7.2020
🖼 Art by RumpleTR on DeviantArt