Untitled
by Colin Turner
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Colin Turner attends the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and is set to graduate in 2027. He is pursuing a Bachelor's degree in English with a minor in Music. He writes poetry and fiction; he plays drums and bass: all passionate pursuits. He is a general lover of the humanities and plans to go into education.
It’s a funny thing: memory. Because for me Ash Wednesday is a cold blue morning in March. A cold blue morning in the car with cold windows and Pokémon Crystal. The ice maze in Pokémon Crystal. I must’ve been six years old, all round cheeks and bowled hair, in a striped shirt, and I must’ve tried that maze a hundred million times. I tried that maze, the way you do when you’re six, over and over and I never got tired. In that little red sedan with cold windows under an icy sky, we pulled over at a squat chapel. A squat white chapel with chipped white paint. And we, my mother and I, we crawled out of the car—I must’ve left the Gameboy—and into the chapel and we received our Ashes. That Ash Wednesday when we went to that white chapel and I tried the Pokémon Crystal ice maze a hundred million times. My bowled hair fell over my Ashen cross and I remember getting flakes in my eyes. I rubbed my forehead with the back of my hand and it came back grey with Ashes. My little grey hand with Ashes in the back of that little red sedan. My mother saying something. I kept going at that ice maze and who knows if I ever made it. Ash Wednesday keeps coming around and each time, there I am, round cheeks and bowled hair: trying the Pokémon Crystal ice maze a hundred million times.