We were always running – down the hill, through the fields, between the rows of identical houses. We weren’t kids. We were explorers, kings, fugitives. A band of rebellion whose parents only feared the worse. Through fields, across streets into adventures we made. The world felt limitless, parks became jungles, bins became castles. We were always running — not from anything, but towards everything. Time was slower then. Softer. We shared rituals together. The dens we made, the secret handshakes we created nicknames only we understood. The summer days stretched on forever as if it would never end, why see the world if we had the beach. the cheap aroma of laundry detergent was the only scent that we truly knew, half of the time we were covered in mud or drenched in the ocean. We didn’t know the world was watching. We just knew how to make fire from sunlight and laughter from nothing. Then one of us stopped coming. At first, we thought it was just a cold, or homework, or a forgotten birthday. But then another stopped, and then another. We didn’t say it out loud, but we all felt it — the world that once belonged to us was slipping away. A fence went up around the old field, and the path we’d worn down with our footsteps was swallowed by weeds. The den was torn down by a new neighbour who “didn’t want kids trespassing.” We were too young to realise why they halt our time together. We still met — just less. And we still ran — just slower. Now, we walk past those places, the once jungles were normal car parks, the trees had been trimmed and the bins stench exiled us from our kingdoms. The once “we” had scattered. Some have moved, some have become strangers, as if they were never there. Forgotten, the only things that have remained are the memories we made, we are all grown up now. But the street remembers us, even if no one else does. Those moments made us, created who we are today and cast forward what we will become. Even though we can not return to those moments, we still carry each and every last bruise, laughter and scrape deep inside. Behind the bushes, where we buried our treasure in an old tin box, the earth is still marked with a dip — not deep, just enough to say: we were here. We don’t run anymore. But sometimes, in dreams, we do.