Be Who You Want to Be

By Peter Bowden

In a town stitched together by telephone wires and the sweet ache of memory, he lived in a house that smelled of old books and last chances. Where the paint peeled like old wallpaper, the mailbox leaned just slightly, as if tired of waiting for good news, and the weeds in the yard were less weeds now than wildflowers misunderstood. He woke each morning as the sun sifted through gauzy curtains, and for a long time, he simply listened to the quiet hum of the past.

Then one morning, he walked—not with purpose, but with wonder—past the café, past the corner where dreams used to gather, and into the woods where no clock dared follow. By a silver-threaded stream, he opened a blank notebook, its pages as expectant as the face of a child, and began to draw birds from memory and magic. The lines came crooked and hopeful. The trees leaned in like old friends, curious. Time, if it passed at all, passed gently, like a leaf turning in midair.

When he returned, he carried with him a different kind of silence—one that glowed around his shoulders like firefly light. Someone at the café asked where he'd been. He smiled, not with lips but with soul. “I remembered who I wanted to be,” he said. And for a moment, the whole room smelled like rain on warm pavement, and it was easy to believe him.



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