On a cloudy day, a cloudy memory spread through my being. It was the rain that had sparked it originally. A memory of dancing playfully, holding hands tight with my siblings, my father, my mother. The rain poured long and hard on us with unrelenting cruelty, yet to my five year old mind, that was the best part. An addition to a game I believed should never end.

Happy giggles and scrambling feet drove us linked in arms as we splashed from puddle to puddle. All at once, we'd tilt our heads heavenward and collect the soft rain drops as they made their little “pit” sounds on our tongues.

But the crying guffaws of laughter and skimping feet were now only echoes in the back of my mind, an occasional reminder of my far off life as an innocent child.

Now I sat, staring forlornly through a window of fog. Raindrops decorated the glass pane where water spots fell like a luxurious curtain at the sides. I had one year left now; one year until my years as a carefree teenager would forever come to an end. Already, me being seventeen now, I felt my childhood slipping away.

It wouldn't be long now.

Soon I would be an adult, a woman of thirty someday. Someone who no longer had time to link hands in the rain and laugh and play. Where was the five year old girl, the one with a sparkle in her eye and an appreciation for simple things? Where was the twelve year old, the one that could take on the world and still laugh at simple jokes?

Where was my childhood?

Where was my time?

Gone. It was all gone.