A Letter to a Lost Friend

To a Lost Friend -

I spoke to you a few months ago - a brief Facebook conversation that felt hours longer than the 15 minutes it actually lasted.  It was the first time I'd heard from you in what seems like years....what actually is years, now I think about it.

And it's strange, because we spent those minutes awkwardly catching up -
"what major did you end up declaring?"
"are you still with that guy?"
"can you believe we're almost seniors???"

- when just a few years ago, your answers to those questions came as easily to me as my own answers.

And I think my professor phrased it perfectly, without ever really meaning to -
"you used to be so close, and now you don't even know where they are."

And I just wanted to say that I missed you.  And I do, but I think the small talk is more painful than not knowing where you are in life.  So I think, maybe, this should be our "goodbye" - the one we were both always too afraid to say to one another all those years ago.

Midnight Philosophy

Dear you,

I write novels in my head at night, under the cloak of a midnight darkness that pushes me to believe I'd be better suited to a philosophy major.  I wonder whether I'd be happier barefoot on an island somewhere, or whether this fast paced city life is where I'm meant to be.  I wonder where I'll be ten years from now; and if where I grew up will make any difference, or if it was all always leading to the same place.

I wonder if this is where I'll meet you, and if you'd be someone different if I were that barefoot girl on an island somewhere.  Would fate have still brought us together somehow, or would you be a barefoot boy on that same island?

But by the next day, the hazy early morning light has erased the words I meant to write down - another midnight letter to a "you" I'm not sure I'll ever meet.

<3

My Quarter-Life Crisis

       Do you know that moment?  When you sit right up in bed, staring into the darkness, and realize that summer is almost over.  And you've done nothing, aside from feed the giraffes once at the zoo.  While everyone on Facebook made several trips to the beach, road-tripped across America, and visited countries like Italy and Africa, your summer photo album has remained nearly empty.    

    

      Instead you've spent the last three months waiting tables, and now you have three weeks until school starts again and your last summer ends.  The last summer before the hardest classes you've ever taken, and an internship for which you're too excited for words to explain, and work work work work work.   

   

     And then what?  Hope for a job that may never come, a career that you've spent four years and the kind of money you can't visualize to achieve - and now it's just not there.  "I'm sorry, we've filled our only opening.  Perhaps another time....", and discarded resumes, and loan bills pouring in because all that money is coming back to haunt you just like you always knew it would.  

       Do you know that moment?  That fear?  Because with the last few weeks of summer draining away, with binders and pencils piling up in the corner of my room, and Facebook friends making "last trips" to the beach, I do know that moment.  It's in my nightmares, forcing me awake and over to my laptop - typing out yet another e-mail to the same professors who likely don't require the introduction at the beginning of each message anymore, because it's just that senior again.  The one who's freaking out about classes and her internship and graduating and finding a job.  

        My 2AMs lately have been filled with me gasping for air, realizing not for the first time that it was just a dream.  Just a nightmare that was stalking me in my sleep, chasing me through parking lots and the now-empty walking trails of my memory.  Those monsters and faceless murderers are just the Real World, and they'll catch up eventually - just like they always do in my dreams.  They're catching up now, grabbing the cuff of the back of my shirt as I run like hell, run faster than I've ever run before.  

<3

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The Couch

That couch was always ours, wasn't it?

I can remember dragging it into our first apartment, finding it on the side of a road somewhere - the reject of a garage sale that had ended the day before.  Our friends thought we were crazy, and maybe we were; but it was a free couch and so we spent our money on wine and cookie dough instead.

We spent so many nights on that couch, working through quarter-life crises at midnight, and the break-up with a boy you thought you loved.  Cramming for finals at the last minute, and watching an entire season of a new show we love rather than sleeping.

We fell in love on that couch, and just as easily, fell out of love in the same spot.  We kissed boys we didn't care about, and cried on each other's shoulder the next night when we realized what we'd done.

We grew up on that couch, and somehow...we grew apart on that couch.  So that the spot where we once sat together, laughing about nothing, I now sat alone wondering when you'd walked away.

Here

<3

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Lovely Serendipity

I don't think I've ever really believed in serendipity.  I've seen it in movies, and read it in books, and watched it on television; but in real life, it was basically a beautiful unicorn - one I'd never get to photograph.

I dreamt of serendipity - of meeting my husband at work one night when he sat down in my section (although let's be real for just one second: if a man at my table tried to give me his number, I'd probably write him off as a total creep to whom I'd served one too many Golden Monkeys).  Of vacationing in New York City and finding the perfect apartment while there - deciding to pick up and move at the last second just because.  Of just happening to fall into my dream job, somehow lucky enough to meet someone on the street.
I day-dreamed all these and a thousand more pieces of my would-be life, and I never truly believed any of them would actually happen.  Life seemed too real for that, for the fairy tales made of serendipity and perfect apartments and love at first sight.  So I just spent 21 years dreaming of things I never believed would come to pass.

And maybe I still don't believe; I am, at heart, a sceptic.
But after today, I have to believe that there was something in the breeze, in that moment at work when a dream walked in and made itself real.

For today, I believe in serendipity.

<3

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"Write About Us"

At work once, in my first waitressing job, one of the cooks told me to write about us some day.
Not him specifically, but the restaurant - the employees, the customers, the regulars.
Jokingly he asked me if, when I became a "big-time journalist", I'd still remember them, still take the time to tell their story.

And it's strange, because I think I'll always be telling their story because it's such an important part of my own.  I spent almost two years at that job, learning the ins and outs of a restaurant that, eventually, I became a piece of even as all the pieces I'd started with broke off and were replaced; the same way that now, I've been replaced.

I've already written about them - about a woman who ate lunch at the same table almost every day, always ordering a rum and coke and telling us about her late husband, "Jack".  About the good nights, and the nights I never wanted to put an apron on again.  About the coworkers who taught me that bitters and lemon work better than any old wives tale at getting rid of hiccups.

I remember so many pieces of that job - the 4th of July when the bartender told the cooks and the waitresses to take a break, to go outside and enjoy the fireworks with the rest of our town.  The nights I left wanting to cry, and the customers who pushed me to that point.  The businessmen who, on Christmas Eve, left me a 200% tip and a note to "have a merry Christmas!".  The regulars who knew my name, and who's drink order I never even had to ask for.  The coworkers who made the bad nights seem not as bad as they felt.

I've spent the last two years writing about them - about the restaurant and the people in it, and the lessons they've taught me - and honestly, I'll probably write about them for the rest of my life even though, by the end, I couldn't wait to get out.

<3

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In Which I Write for 21 Years

When I was a little girl, I wanted to be Van Gogh - I would spend hours at my grandmother's house attempting to draw the pictures and scenes in my head - images that I'd dreamt of, and just knew I had to put on paper.  

And I always found myself disappointed when I held them up in front of the light and found that they were just slightly less than exceptional.  So disappointed that I'd crumple them up, the way I imagined a frustrated artist would, and throw them on the ground as soon as I saw the slightest mistake. Erasers, apparently, weren't good enough for a 5-year-old artist.  

Eventually, I'd give up on my obvious masterpiece and instead, I'd write stories on the same blank sheets of paper that my grandmother had handed me to create a work of art on.  This - writing - was what I fell back on without even realizing it.  

I can vividly remember writing a "novel" titled Revenge after noticing how many murder mystery novels my grandmom had on her bookshelf.  It's a bit fuzzy now, but I think my plot idea was that someone had committed murder, and then framed his friend.  The friend, of course, found out and was seeking revenge.  I know...I should probably pitch the idea to Hollywood; it's obviously genius.

I always remember my first poem as being one I wrote when I was about 10 years old at the beach one summer - my parents and brother in another room, my grandmom on the couch next to me.  We'd probably abandoned another game of Monopoly after my grandmom caught my mom helping me cheat, and was too angry to continue.  

In the summer

We have fun

In the sun

And when we are dun**

We keep cool

In the pool

By the shade

With a glass of lemonade.  

**and yes, I spelt done that way.  My grandmother, horrified at the use of the word, may have taken a moment to teach me the difference between done and dun after that.  

Also, yes - I remember that poem by heart.  You know, I'm just practicing for one day when I'm asked to recite it in front of an adoring crowd.  Any day now, right?

As I got older, the writing never really stopped.  In middle school, I kept a notebook of my poems that I would hand off to friends, asking them to tell me what they thought; I may have been many things - modest or shy about my writing however, were never qualities of mine (which makes this whole blogging thing really weird, right?)

At the end of middle school and through the beginning of high-school, the writing got more depressing - more about tears and the moon than about sunshine and cherry pie.  But it never stopped me.  I found friends who wrote similarly, and we compared poetry in study hall (I really wish I were kidding), eventually gathering the courage - a couple months into freshman year - to approach the Spanish teacher in charge of the school's literary magazine (which, minus us, had about three members).  

All through high-school, I kept several notebooks of my writing, and each time I go home for a weekend now I dig them out of my drawers to read a few that I'm not completely ashamed of having written.  There are poems in there I wrote for English classes - ones that my teacher junior year told me he was proud of, and ones that caused my Journalism teacher to tell me I was one of the most talented writers he'd taught (something that I guess wasn't terribly difficult to do in my school, but at the time it made me smile for days).  

Going into my senior year of college, I constantly tell people who ask that I'd like to write for a magazine eventually.  That I'll start out at a small newspaper, and hopefully work my way up.  And I would like that.  Actually - I'd love it more than anything.  But even as I say it, I worry that I'll never be good enough for that - that my writing just isn't that good.

And maybe, probably, it's not.  But writing is the one thing I've always done - even when I wanted to be Van Gogh, a lawyer, a psychiatrist - I never stopped writing.  Even if I'm not good enough, doesn't it make more sense to do what I want to and to work like hell so that maybe, one day, I will be good enough?

<3 

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When We Bake Together

Dear you,

It's strange, the things that make me think of you....
like icing on a cupcake that I don't even eat.

One day, when I meet you, will we bake together?  The two of us cramped into a small apartment, flour caked on both of our hands as we move around each other the way only two people in love can maneuver in a small room?  Will you put your arms around me as I turn to kiss you, my hands still playing in the bowl of dough?  I imagine that for a moment, it'll all feel perfect - your lips on mine, my hands squished into raw eggs and brown sugar, yours on my hips.  The sun shining in through the window above our sink will land on our faces, slanting in a way that a photographer would love.

And as you pull away, I'll find two hand prints on my hips - proof that the moment wasn't a dream after all.

<3
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Won't You Stay

Dear Summer

I wish you would stay forever....hot days punctuated by warm nights spent eating dinner on the porch.  I wish you would fill 365 days a year with sudden beach trips, fireflies in a jar, and days wandering the park looking for the perfect picture.  Late night walks because we can, and falling asleep in the backyard.  Picking flowers to bring home for the living room.

I want to settle up inside you, and never worry about 50 degrees or a coat again.  I want you to stay forever, in a way that will make me forget you'd ever left at all.

<3

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If I Could Just Crawl Between the Skyscrapers

New York City skyline - November, 2012

All my life, I looked towards the city.
I saw myself there - in my one bedroom apartment, or on the street outside my building hailing a cab, or on my way to a restaurant with friends.  Or even just (and to be honest, mostly) just standing in the center of it all, looking up.

In high-school, my junior class trip was to Boston.  As we drove into the city for dinner our first night there, I stared up around us at the lights and a boy sitting next to me on the bus remarked
You're one of those people.
The kind of person who just thinks the city is so beautiful.
And I was. Oh, I was.

And in that moment, I so wanted to be a part of it all, to get out of the small town where it felt like everyone knew my name (even though they so didn't - we're not that small) and escape to somewhere among the skyscrapers.  I wanted to find myself in an office with a city-view window, looking out over the beautiful winding roads and oddly shaped buildings that I got to call home.

It seemed so big, and I felt big enough to fit inside of it.

<3

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To a Love I Haven't Met Yet

Dear You,
One day, I'll want to share these moments with you.
These 4am panic attacks, Friday nights out, holidays, thoughts, fears, joys....
The heartbreaks that come before you.
I'll want to share my life with you, and maybe this is how I'll do it.

Maybe one day, our lives will finally cross paths, and you'll read these letters.  And when you do, you'll think of the me you never knew, and maybe you'll fall in love with her anyway.

I know we haven't met yet, and that maybe we never will because isn't that how life works sometimes; but these letters are for now.  For while we're both still waiting.

<3
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For my entire life, I've had this stuffed animal - a teddy bear that I, creatively, named Teddy.  As I got older, I'd swear his real name was Theodore Roosevelt, after the president that my dad had told me invented teddy bears (whether or not that was true, I never quite cared).

He has one button eye (where my brother bit off his real eye, and my grandmom had to sew in a new one) and the fur behind it has turned blue, the way skin does beneath a cheap ring; and a nose that had to be glued back on by my dad after the boy down the street broke it off one summer night.  His fur is falling off in patches, and on his back you can see where he was sewn back together a couple of different times (once, by my aunt who carefully re-stuffed him one afternoon with material from her son's pillows, winking at me and calling it "our little secret"; and a second time when I did it myself in a high-school Fashion Design class, years after my uncle had died and we'd stopped hearing from my aunt).  Somehow, the little red tag that says he was made by PlaySkool is still intact after 21 years.

When I was younger, my parents would joke that whoever I married would have to share a bed with both me and my Teddy.  At the time, I thought that was perfectly reasonable.  For some reason, they never questioned when, after middle-school had started and most of my friends had put their childhood toys in the closets, I sill slept with my teddy bear.  Somehow, he had become as much a part of the family as our cat.

I never had a dog dare try to rip him apart; somehow, they knew that the aging teddy bear was off limits.  And when I lost him at the beach, the old man who found him went door to door at our hotel looking for the little girl who loved him.  Until middle-school, I never went a night without sleeping with him, and even after that only when I had to.

He was there through the worst year of my life, through first kisses and first break-ups, through bad test grades and the subsequent fights.  He was there when my best-friend and I fought, and when I couldn't decide what college to go to.  When I finally did decide, he went to college with me, even though by that time it seemed a little strange even to me (of course, my roommate had a stuffed animal, too and I realized that it wasn't that strange at all).

Somehow, he's always been there - through the last 21 years of my life; and somehow, I think he always will be.  Even when I'm married and can't sleep with my teddy bear anymore.  Even when I have kids of my own with teddy bears of their own.
He's a piece of me that I can't seem to let go of, even when I know that maybe I should.

What about you?  Do you have a toy or blanket from your childhood that you can't seem to let go of?

<3

I'm linking up with Super Sunday Sync with Kelsey from Stories of Kel.  Join us? :)

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One day, my Saturdays will be full of you;
full of you, and me, and a thousand simple moments.

Hot chocolate in bed before either of us can wake ourselves up enough to check the mail;
sharing a copy of the local paper - you doing the crossword, me checking for editing mistakes; the cat curled in a ball between our partially intertwined legs, the sun slanting through the windows and landing right on her side in the way it always seems to wherever she lies down;
a shared bowl of rasberries for lunch while we scroll through the Netflix que, my head on your shoulder and your arm around mine;
singing along (off key) to our song as we move easily around each other, making dinner together;
a shower together at the end of the night, and finding our way into bed sometime around 10PM, and wishing tomorrow never has to come; falling asleep with our legs intertwined and the cat searching for that strip of sunlight by our feet.

One day, my Saturdays will be full of you;
of you, and me, and the thousand simple moments that make up who we are.

<3


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One Day

Neither of them had ever thought it would come to this:

a single almost-Romeo and Juliet moment.  Catching eyes from across a not-so-crowded nursing room lobby, the television playing the 6-o-clock news dully in the background - nothing new to report since the 4-o-clock news. 

It wasn't the meet-cute they'd imagined 50, 60 years ago, their eyes starry with the romantic comedy relationships and marriages of their friends' lives.  

~~~ 

One day, their friends had whispered in the dark of a movie theatre, their other arm around a new girlfriend; their hands trembling as they brushed hair out of their eyes to make a place for the veil; their whole body shaking as their beautiful wives clung to their hands and the doctors asked for "one more push!"  One day.

One day, they'd learned to tell themselves as another February came and went with no roses on the doorstep or special lingerie picked with them in mind.  One day, as the younger generation learned how to hold hands, sweaty palms in their parents' basements, and still they didn't know themselves.  

And they'd thought one day had come and gone, brushing past them in its rush to get to its one man or woman, forgetting all about them on its way.  Somewhere along the line, they'd forgotten all about that whispered promise from years so long since past; they'd forgotten the pain of being the only one left alone and had bought a cat to sleep on the other side of the bed.

One day, one day stopped passing through their minds; they'd locked it up in the back of their memories, told themselves to forget it; that one day was a fairytale told to those who don't get the storybook ending.  A consolation prize that never comes to pass. 

And now one day had come, brushing in through the curtain-less windows, weaving around the wheelchairs and Rummy cards, landing right in their lap and pulling their focus across the room to one of the so many people they'd stopped noticing years ago.  

One day came, in the back of a nursing home, the 6-o-clock news playing in the background, for two people who had forgotten what one day was. 

~~~

<3

I am a Small Town who Dreams of Being a City

I live in a small town that is all at once clinging to its Stars Hollow-esque roots and dreaming of one day being a city somewhere between Center City, Philadelphia and San Francisco.

~~~

I thought this as I toured my college for the first time, realizing for the first and certainly not the last time that I will not escape a certain type of residency despite my whole-hearted childhood dreams turned pleas to find myself in Times Square looking up at the skyscrapers and the lights above and around me, feeling at home for what I imagined would be the first time.  I believed this was the first step on the road to the "real" first step when maybe, it was the first step on the road to where I really wanted to be.

And I realized it a thousand times over as I toured my college again and again, eventually moving in a year and a half later - all of my most important belongings packed into the trunks of two cars and gradually carried into a smaller-than-I-realized dorm room, one tiny box adorned with one tiny note from my father (a note I'd cry while reading, realizing for the first time I'd really left home; my roommate across the room wondering just what she'd gotten herself into by agreeing to live with me).

I realized it as I explored the town with my new friends two and a half years ago, walking into stores and boutiques and restaurants, feeling grown up when I was oh-so-far from it; as I noticed the street carts and the architecture and the people - all reminiscent of a city I thought I'd find myself in one day.

I realized it again tonight, sitting in a class that is teaching me what I will do for the rest of my life; and this time I realized it differently.

I realized it as a fact of not just what my town is, but of who I am.  I've spent my life dreaming of being someone bigger, someone who fits into a city and who's life mirrors what a city is.  

When I was, for the first time in my life, able to actively decide where I would live, I chose not a city, but a town that dreamt of being a city.  With a city around the corner, its welcoming arms open to me for the next four years, I instead chose the small town with its decades-old buildings and college-built community.  

~~~

I think we choose the places that define us.  

All my life I ached for the city - I dreamt of it, and longed for the days spent exploring its twisting roads and skyscrapers reaching for the sky.  I thought I would one day find my place in the city - that it was where I belonged, and where I would find myself.  

But when the time came to choose that for myself, I actively refused it.  I turned away from it even with the opportunity staring me down; and instead I found that I was immersing myself in small-town America, a town that is, at most, reminiscent of Manayunk and New Hope and at least, a fictional storybook setting where "everyone knows your name". 

I chose the place that was me, even as I firmly believed that I was someone else entirely, and managed to convince everyone around me of that belief.  

I always dreamt of being someone big - of surrounding myself with big people and big buildings.  I dreamt of the anonymity that came with that bigness, and convinced myself I would one day be immersed in it.

Instead, I find myself here, wanting nothing more than to stay in a place like this forever.

I live in a town that dreams of being a city;

but when push comes to shove, it rejects high-reaching buildings and hotels.  It finds its home in well-known bars and restaurants that choose to cater to the not-so-well-known.  It burrows itself into small corners, blocks that would make New York City laugh, and privately owned boutiques.  

When it comes down to it, I live in a town that is exactly what and where it should be.

~~~

We choose the people and places and things that define us.  We surround ourselves with definitions of who we are: through our friends, our homes, our favorite books and that movie we could watch a thousand times.

No matter what we tell ourselves, we choose for ourselves what and where and who we want to be.  One day, you will wake up and find yourself exactly where you need to be without your ever realizing you were making your way there all along.

<3

I Fall in Love...

In July, my father visited his parents and came home with an armful (or three) of records from his and his brother's childhood.

Fleetwood Mac, George Harrison, Jim Croce...

Artists I've never heard of...bands whose names I don't recognize.... Nazareth, Canned Heat...

I've always romanticized old things...and these records from years before I was born are no different.

While I don't collect antiques, I love the feel of that which has been used...

of flea markets and thrift stores.

Of the rivets in an old record that was listened to twenty too many times.  Or the tears staining the words of a love letter found in an old military jacket pocket.

In used book stores, I fall in love - with the signed cover jackets, with the words highlighted to help the reader remember.  With the pages bent on paragraphs that meant something special to someone else.

When my school sells old CDs, I fall in love with music in a way I never usually do.  I buy fifteen CDs for the price of one, listen to artists I've never even heard of.

In thrift stores, I guess the stories of the previous owners of a worn t-shirt, write stories in my mind about the reasons behind selling a fur coat, or a paint stained pair of jeans.

I fall in love with the history, despite always finding history classes boring.

I fall in love with the personality that an old notebook brings....the personality that I never found in history classes.

I become nostalgic for a time I was never a part of.

What about you?  Do you romanticize history, or have you always been bored by the dates and names you didn't recognize?

<3

One Day

One day, we'll look back on this.

At the nights we spent laughing about nothing, sitting in circles on yours or mine or somebody else's dorm floor, spinning a bottle and ignoring what it told us to do; like when you flip a coin to make a decision, and it lets you know what you really wanted after all.  We'll look back at that time we dressed up for no reason and had the neighbors take our photograph - all dressed up with nowhere to go.  About the spontaneous day trips to the beach when May rolled around and it seemed like finals were suffocating us - like summer would never surface and all we needed was a day away from the text books.  About the time we found a book on how to read palms, and spent hours perfecting our "craft".  And how after that, you read the palms of every boy at every party or bar we went to, telling them how deep their love line looked.

About the times we felt like each others' families silently comforting, or speaking words that seemed like wisdom when they were asked for.  Or the night I called you, unable to make the words come out in order, and you came anyway because you know what I meant.  About the funerals we attended for one another, just a hand to hold, mourning a person we didn't know but you did.  

We'll remember the ways we met, but our memories will never be quite like the reality, and the lines will blur between separate occasions and different people.  We'll forget what those first few weeks felt like - the weeks before we had each other, and after we'd left our families behind.  We'll forget the details of the nights spent alone, only to remember the ones that came after you knocked on my door and asked me to get lunch with you.

We'll look back on the years we spent whispering about our futures, never knowing quite how different they'd be from what we dreamt. And we'll wonder: where did the time go?  When did we change our dreams to fit our reality?

When did we move out of the messy apartment with the absent landlord, and into the studio flat down the street from our new jobs?  When did we get engaged, and play maid-of-honor to one another's weddings, crying silently as we zippered the back of a gorgeous white gown, because we always knew it would be you and him.

When did we forget about the moments we first met, about the long nights that made us like family?

One day...we'll look back, and we'll wonder.
Where did the room with the white walls and the stained gray rug go?

<3

One Night Stand

It had been a long time coming...or not a long time, but they'd both known from the start that this had to end soon.

As the sun was going down, making way for the moon to take his place in the darkened night sky, they'd both stood in line at the coffee shop, waiting for their gingerbread hot chocolates to surface amongst all the lattes and cups of coffee.  

When the first one came up, they both reached for it. And for just a second, their hands touched.  

Nothing special, just confusion over who's drink was ready.  A moment of comparing receipts before he said she could have it...he'd wait for the next one.  

And while he waited, they'd talked.  

Somehow, they'd talked about everything - her fear of never finding a career she loved as much as she loved the feel of her camera in her hands, and his of never getting out of this city where the lights shone too bright and the people never slept.  

When the shop closed a couple hours later, and they were the only ones left aside from the barristas, they made a decision, although neither of them ever actually spoke the words.

They'd spend the night together, talking until the sun started to peek through the clouds, and they knew everything there was to know about one another.  And then they'd sleep.  And when the moon had gone, they'd part. 

No promises beyond the light that shown through her bedroom curtains, and the cup of tea they'd share for breakfast.

But now she was watching the slant of the light across his calf where the blanket didn't quite cover him.     And she was wishing the morning didn't have to come, because she wasn't quite sure she'd ever loved anybody this much.  

And she could make this man the career she'd always been missing.

<3

The Old House

Do you remember the old house?

A couple blocks down.  Abandoned, and left in the care of the state.  

We used to find our way in on warm summer nights.  Midnight and armed only with a flashlight and a camera, convinced we'd find something to scream about.  Something better than all the horror films we spent our Friday nights watching, together in your room.  

We'd push our way past the kitchen door, sealed shut with time and the burnt out fumes of a fire long since extinguished, prepared to find the worst.  Or at least hoping to.  

Like we were the horror film we so badly wanted to be scared by.

We passed it last night, on your way to take me home.

Still the same after all these years, beautiful in its old age and somehow made more so by the burnt edges we hadn't seemed to notice the last time.  

Now though, it's somehow much more terrifying - more of a place to be avoided than the adventure we once imagined it to be.

And we reminisced; all the fragmented memories we managed to piece together into one whole of our jointed youth spent walking every twist and turn of our neighborhood, memorizing the number of steps we had to take to our favorite trail.  

We reminded each other of the overturned bathtub in what used to be a bedroom, and the molded stairs we followed into the basement, where we swore we'd find proof of a ghost.  We joked about the tired bats in the attic that simply stared at as us we made our entry, as though we were a guest long since over-due to a dinner party that had ended hours ago.    

And we were shocked at the things we used to do.  At how terrified we both now are by the sight of that house we once spent our weekend nights in, that we now both now we'll never see the inside of again.  

I guess it's just one more part of our youth that we walked away from without ever realizing we were waving goodbye.

<3

All the Little Things

Day 51

It was the first time in three years that she'd seen him.

So much had changed, but so much was the same.

His shirt was one she'd seen before.  Either that, or it just seemed like it was because of it's familiarity.  Because it was so him.  

For hours they talked, about their lives now, about their lives then - their lives together.  

He knew her major before she said it, and she knew which friends he was talking about without his using their names.  He knew exactly which love note she was referring to, exactly which photograph she was describing.

So much had changed in three years, but all the little things were the same.

And for the million things they'd forgotten or missed out on, they remembered every little detail.

How he liked his meat cook, and that she ate lemons like most people ate oranges.

TV shows, pets' names.  Photos that haven't been looked at in years, but sit in a box somewhere, buried by more recent memories.  

They were distant memories to one another - almost lost in the folds of time; but somehow, they'd made a place in their minds for all the almost-meaningless details, despite all the larger memories that had been lost in the hundreds of Saturday afternoons that had passed since their last lunch together.  

It was the little things that stuck, like her favorite candybar, and the song he played on repeat during long car-rides.  

We make a place for these things, so that years later, at lunch with a love long since lost, all the memories associated with his or her favorite candy bar comes flooding back, and suddenly you're 15 again and so in love.

<3