Monday, September 30, 2013

Hunger

Since moving into our oversize house that hangs on our shoulders and bags at the seams, our pearly white cat, as pristine as snow before it hits the ground, hit the ground. The ground happened to be suffocated with layers of primordial dust and mysterious blue dye surrounding the tray that holds the potent food I present to him each day. His spirit brother from a camping trip to the attic, our old tom too wide to fit under the dresser without leaving a tail floundering near the floor, remained a lightly toasted golden brown, ooey and gooey and deliciously warm, with one patch of white on his neck. I think our tom is worried about the the little one; he has been disguised as yet another layer of this house, thrown over the original hardwood and forgotten.

They wait at the landing for me as I parade up the stairs bearing ceramic bowls from a discount superstore and metal spoons that melt in my hand, and then they wait at the threshold as I transfer the brown goo from the tin to their mouths. Sharp fangs have nothing to pierce, so they scrape the edge of the bowl, echoing a shriek into my inner ear. As they swallow, they have no reason to think that it is late, for they have slept all day, but I leave the tray and the dye and the cats behind, and I fade into the house, drifting away as though scraped off until translucent. My eyes close and my ears banish the meowing screams to reality as I escape.

Sunday, September 29, 2013

A Place In The Choir

"All God's critters got a place in the choir, some sing lower, some sing higher, some sing out loud on the telephone wire, and some just clap their hands, or paws, or anything they got now." - Bill Staines

In Ancient Greece, even great philosophers, men of science, antique nerds with clay tablets instead of smart tablets, thought that music could cure disease. I happen to agree with them. A melody has the illiterate ability to penetrate every wall, break down every cancelled childhood heartache, repair the wounds from a stray alcoholic father or imprisoned mother, and jostle the dregs of inspiration back to the surface. Looking around today, as a few miscellaneous people braved the Sunday blues to sing and eat cookies in our newly-painted living room, I saw the pain drain from each's face in a different medium: years of loneliness spilled onto the floor and evaporated into the cacophonous air, the blood from the stabs of memory shards dripped off skin and disappeared, and our little family's anxiety about the small guest list dissolved at the first note of "Fire and Rain."

The cats chimed in for their part, wailing from the upper floors when we hit a trill or triplet, and bumbling through the forest of unfamiliar feet resting on the rug. The fatter one buried his face in the coffee cake and earned an exile by the window until the last grandparent closed the front door, joyfully an hour and a half behind schedule, to everyone's thrill. But as the people and the voices flowed through the house, the cats lost no pain. The only ones who get to shed their tension are the convoluted humans, the ones who know enough to be completely and totally unaware that anything has changed.

Saturday, September 28, 2013

Dreamstate

Some aspirations become pickled with age and end up tasting like someone's grandmother's white socks from the 1980s that have turned a peculiar orange color. So we tuck them away in forgotten drawers that shut into the inner folds of a void, and then we instead buy stockings for our corporate dinner parties that no one wanted to go to. Some aspirations remain fresh and crisp in our refrigerator, but braces or a retainer tell us we can't devour them, much as we crave the sense of purpose they offered up. There is the rare aspiration, often the runt of the litter, that presents itself so many times at the end of the hall taunting us that we have no choice but to play tag according to its rules until we win. There is that rare aspiration that grows up.

For me, type 1: fashion design. Needles take too much blood. Type 2: writing. Surrounded by revolutionaries who always find the right words, the desire has been drained from me, leaving only a thin layer of condensation from over the years. Type 3, today: a band. An honest-to-god, people-will-listen band with a dorky name and too many violins. But, today, inserted into my mom's folk band as percussionist (via the cup song), the dreams were thin and worn and easily torn, disintegrating in my hand as I tried to pull them in. "Now," J5 instructed professionally, "just do that second part a little quieter, so it'll go over the strings. Balance. There ya go." I stared up at my mother, expectantly puckering up to her shining flute. "Twice, then the pickup."

My fingers rested precariously on the edge of the blue plastic cup. The hopes of my foot-tapping and soul-searching and song-singing seemed to become outdated, idiotic. But, with obligation one is a slave to their word, and I methodically began to tap and the surface of the cup. Instantly, the rhythm flowed into my hands as though injected by one of those oh-so-dangerous needles, infiltrating my floodgates and taking over my head, tugging at my bones to rock to and fro, and I felt, ever-so-slightly, the pick-up lift me off my feet and rise. Clutching the hand of my dream with one hand and my cup with the other, the three of us laughed and sung and then we grew up.

Friday, September 27, 2013

Old Nights

There was a tradition locked in a dusty and dank tome, pilfered by ever-changing responsibilities and warped by the immobile pillars of change: a dinner made entirely from prepared foods brought home from a world-famous Mediterranean store a few blocks from my old school. Flaky, burn-your-tongue pockets filled with lush mushrooms and spinach; fresh tear-aways of mozzarella tickled with a thin layer of salt; electric and eclectic pickled garlic to throw next to anything, letting potent flavor seep into the plate itself. These foods were, for me, an icon of indulgence, of release on a Friday evening after tensely being whittled away for five days. They became Pavlov's bell, and the power of association lured me into the trap of trying to fit too many bits of filo dough in my mouth at once whenever my old roommate anxiety began to coil around my neck.

I switched schools. We had no need for afternoon excursions downtown. There was no Friday release, instead replaced with a fat social studies textbook that had gorged itself on the bits of my sanity and an orange notebook open to the exact middle. Until, tonight, I arrived home to a suave father smiling as he slid tinfoil boxes into the new fridge for later. I had no problems waiting, so long as I got my fair share.

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Familiar Face

There are those in the airtight hallway, filled with students held together by suction and a shared need for the global studies homework, whom are distinct and yet invisible to my eyes, verdant and yet opaque from clarity: there are those in the hallway who have become my hair-color people. This squadron of hodgepodge contemporaries probably have names in the yearbook, but to be they are unlabeled entities that exist within the realm of their unique characteristics - that boy always wearing a dark leather jacket, the girl with the flowing blonde hair and pink backpack. Unlike the people I see out in public, for whom I draw up fantastical possibilities and mathematical probabilities, I leave the stories of my hair-color people unpublished in a desk drawer.

Sometimes I know too much already. Words can dart between so-called private conversations where there is no room to catch them in, and I could tell you exactly what each of my friends thinks of "oh that guy" without thinking thrice. Sometimes the letters are forced in front of my eyes and I involuntarily cast aspersions onto the ones who cannot argue with me about it without being reported to a large man in a blue shirt (occasionally boasting a shiny badge). But it makes me wonder - whose frizzy haired blogging girl am I from day to day? And what do my undefined comrades think of "oh that girl?"

In The Bubble (Makeup for 9/25)

Last year, there was beneath our every plummet-point a loosely woven net to catch us. Though some fell through the gaps, screaming with no precision and all the anguish of young mind in the midst of a war, others clung to each strand of rope and hoisted themselves back onto the solid rock. But also, last year, there was above our every climb a ceiling, a place where the path stopped and the sky went up and there was no in between. You could stand on the very crux of a mountain and reach with both hands, but you would grasp only a bit of stray wind, and perhaps the lone insect. You see, we were provided with make-up work if we were in danger of failing, but the system couldn't contemplate an A+; literally, there were rules preventing it.

And now we are set loose into the wilds of a new walk, on a different island, with different views from every side and no clear compass. We follow the stars, if we can find them, and we look for the sunrise and crane our heads to pinpoint the exact center of the orb on the horizon before it becomes bright and a eyesore. The incline keeps getting steeper, but the road keeps winding up to an untouched place that lures us in with bush berries and praise you can pull right off the vine. The problem is, one step wrong and we will fall to the new net: a variety of angry waves, lapping at the shore and sky and devouring everything they find.

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Odd One Young

I understand the ambiguity my dad felt in his footsteps on that first day his second skipped year. A senior at 15; a radical, a genius, a visionary they all called him. He integrated into the excellence washing over him, and as his pencil got shorter, his fingertips grew longer, stretching out into the depths of humanity with only a high standard as armor. My problem is this: I have only a fraction of that time to reach and explode with inches on all sides. I have one period everyday to pry open the souls of a few consistently bored ninth graders baring Spanish to English translation apps and t-shirts they grew into over borrowed summers. Sometimes they do not see me there. Sometimes they say that no sits in the third seat of the third row; they look over my head and call to an unseen comrade out of my league.

Everything was so different last year. I had C2, the vibrantly confident and somewhat tiny fluent Argentinian who surprisingly remembered my name. Even though we hardly conversed in the beginning, he set the precedent for a bright, worthy disciple for our elders to obtain, and they stopped thinking of me as "the frizzy hair seven" and started calling me by name. I had A, and I had A2, and A3, and they blanketed me in experience, advice, and dirty jokes I didn't understand. And now what do I have? I have a too tall cut-up, an underwear-boasting sports fan, and their contemporaries. My fingertips are stunted in their glove.

Monday, September 23, 2013

Hide and Seek

There is always just enough space in a shadow to hide a nightmare, and the nightmares only come when shadows blanket the world to the point of suffocation. Behind the corner of an abandoned building, there is an old darkness waiting to alight. Under the roof of a lonely train station, there is a new darkness anxious to claim a new disciple. They crawl between the cracks in this city and refuse to come out, they whisper strange words to a crowd that listens as a guilty pleasure. Sometimes it is better to feel the back of your neck elongate and freeze with dread than it is to feel the lukewarm water of everyday.

When the energy oozes out of me and my eyelids droop ominously: That's when they start to come. I can feel them pressing against my throat with heavy fingers, they strangle the prospects for tomorrow and lure me out the window, frantically searching for something to point out as the perpetrator of my insanity. I seem to draw a blank each time, unable to tear an unknown gaze from my skin. Paranoia: A lesson in how to stay awake.

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Third Floor

It was bizarre to imitate my kitten, who squeezed into the floor today and emerged coated in black wax, and hide above everyone's heads as my mother served coffee and cleanliness to a few book group enthusiasts keen on vehemently discussing nonfiction. I had for company: a red couch covered in freezing cold pleather that swallowed me between its folds, a bottle of seltzer speeding towards room temperature every second, and my customary Safari tabs, Netflix and Facebook, red and blue. They caressed me as only abstract visions from solitude can, but none had hands warm enough to coax me into sleep.

I heard glimmers of conversation drift up the stairs and I'm sure the four of them heard echoes of showtunes sung slightly offkey drift down, but the solid facade of privacy persevered, even as I hid behind the kitchen counter clutching a cup until the party migrated into another room. Not that I'm not used to pretending like I am somewhere else - everyone needs a smiling mask in their collection, unblemished by the imperfections of teenage children, work, and everything else that disappears at night like light running over the horizon. It was simply bizarre to do it in my own home. And that is all.

Saturday, September 21, 2013

All In Good Time

At precisely 4:07 p.m., the clouds seemed as dark as B flat piano key, the wind seemed as fierce as an grasslands predator mid-pounce, and my prospects seemed as dim as a fluorescent light bulb just turned on. But I got brighter, carried in the arms of the vigorous American folk dance, prevalent on the Eastern seaboard, known as "contra dance." (Look it up.) The exhilarating yet familiar throb of each move hitting my body - swing with your neighbor on the side, pull by through the blisters, dosido while spinning like a tornado, arms twisting wildly - was neon against the dull premise of the day. Faces swirled across my vision in a swarm, up and down the set and back, towards the cathartic band blasting from the top of the hall, and slowly they blurred into one huge smiling presence, there to catch me after the craziest of flourishes.

This coming from me, the girl who's never seen an elliptical and cowers under her blankets at the thought of a Sunday morning jog. This coming from me, the girl who can't stand the erosive noise of a rowing machine and gets her feet tangled in the endless straps. Regardless, today's movement sucked the pain out of my neck like a reversed vampire and sucked the darkness out of my mood like a vacuum. It magnified the profound belief in humanity held my so many ex-hippie heirs, the flower grandchildren. Most of all, it inspired the weight on my chest to get in shape, so it got up and ran away without so much as a "time me."

Friday, September 20, 2013

Grace The Stage

Apparently type A and type B personalities are two ends of the same yardstick. Meet type 1 and type 2: the theatre people, the ones that I have immersed myself in up to my eyes, the very definition of a stark double reality I have become accustomed to, everyone falling into their role and leaving me confusedly waiting backstage in the low red lights, being forced to listen to the provocative noises leaking out of the props closet.

Type 1: The stars. With their fancy Fifth Avenue coats and snakeskin clutches and impromptu renditions of old Broadway's greatest hits, they seem to live inside the spotlight, making home to its shadows and giving them all names. The explosive, incandescent glow that would make most people hide their eyes and suck in their stomachs only enhance their flawless complexion, their inanimate smiles. They have no need for sucking in stomachs.

Type 2: The crew. Instead of a mink coat the size of a small jaguar, something black from the North Face tossed nonchalantly over skinny jeans and a tee. Instead of snakeskin clutches, hiking backpacks chock full of coffee coupons and cough drops from years before. Instead of singing, they keep their voices (as magnificent as many are) tucked inside a pocket and only bring it out under a shower head. Why do they love the business? In school, back when the world could at least pretend life was fair, they led the school plays' red curtain from up to down each night for a week, a couple times a year. And they grew up and it dawned on the industry that they didn't believe in fur coats, and they were shoved into a pile of paperwork.

Where do I belong here? Am I, as some friends have claimed, an undiscovered type 1 with the potential to revolutionize the double standard in drama? Doubtful. Yet, am I, as I have often feared, too young to run from the impending type 2 wave over my head? Am I still locked inside the belief that I could follow the stage directions even without sturdy feet to take me? With my habitual fall audition looming, I look more like a deer in headlights than a Manhattan starlet in a spotlight. And the car isn't slowing down.

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Vanishing Acts

It's always the same story with me, I know. Another dirty day thrown into the mesh hamper, left out for washing as soon as the pageviews break through the roof. I know I lose things, and scream at everyone until they magically appear, fresh and smelling of detergent. Today, it does not matter that you are buried under a mass of new jeans with avocado and blood stains on the right pant, because there's something I need to add to the mix: Panic. I lost my science notebook, which had my lab, which is 60% of my grade. And I panicked. I couldn't breathe, and all the colors started swirled around on overdrive, as though watered down and smeared across a palette. I remember, as I often do after these incidents, the feeling on my fingers of abrasion as I tore through whatever bag had sucked up my property this time. I remember, too, the alien sound of my screams that came inadvertently through the haze and wafting at me; wailing, sobbing, destroying the bonds between the silence and the air, ripping apart the space and reaching inside it, grasping at any glimmer of a green graph paper notebook. But it's gone. And I can't escape the abyss it has left in its wake.

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Laboratory

The most stressful time of the week is the night before the laboratory period. My room ends up littered with bits of crumpled up paper and I have too many tabs open to see, like one of those rainy days when there are too many ominously charcoal clouds dancing above my head so they all blend into a great storm. I've never understood why there are two velocities, or why I should care that igneous rock is the one vomited out by fuming volcanoes. No one has ever baited me onto the hook that some people describe as the pull of curiosity. I don't understand tedious lectures that leave me, pen in hand, mouth open, gazing at the red hand of the clock as it tick, tick, ticks around the world.

Am I supposed to include the data tables? Or are they supposed to make home inside my right brain, pull up a chair and stay a while until they can't pay the rent? Am I supposed to write a page about the discovery of the metric system? Or would it be better to cut the feet off and scamper under my duvet and dream about it instead? Nothing makes sense to me now. It is as though someone has placed a large glass plane between me and the task at hand, and I can only scrape longingly at the image of something that should be tangible. That is, if I even belong here at all.

Assembly (Make-Up For 9/18)

450 of us, crowded into a two-tier auditorium littered with purple paraphernalia and embellished with hungry teachers who would give anything to walk out the back doors - the noise cacophonous, penetrating even the oldest administrators' ears, and threatening to stampede through the walls and leave us in a pile of dust - an endless flurry of seat-finding, as if an upholstered red seat that left pink fuzz on my white jeans could affect one's social standing for the rest of eternity: This, for those who have forgotten, is a typical assembly.

As per the usual here, where violinists wear horse costumes and for a major assignment someone presents a freshly printed copy of their rendering of "Romeo and Juliet" featuring donuts, there was no reason to hold the grand affair. A few reminders about rules in the hallway (that no one would bother with). A couple horror stories about muggers and truancy officers (which would metamorphize into urban legends that would linger like dusk until the end of the century). Most noticeably? Nothing new. The same speech as a year ago. And suddenly, the familiar words seem out of place, because their backdrop is so dramatically changed.

Monday, September 16, 2013

Braces

I got braces last week, and apparently I know nothing about the world. These small pieces of metal and a few dabs of glue are supposed to reorganize a skeleton and shock it into compliance; dental work always seems to conquer the England to its Rome, and destroy everything in the base line. They are minuscule when compared to the immensity of our bones, and still by using the powers of good form they are able to civilize a mess of enamel and plaque into an orderly smile. There must be something I am missing here, because the small can only spin the wheel together, and until then they must ride the tide. The braces at at a disadvantage of one; my right canine is rotated enough so that there wasn't even room. Lesson one in Mr. P's physical science class: when two forces oppose, the outcome will always be zero, positive, or negative. And we are hovering at around thirty to twenty-nine.

If a city of over-acheivers stood up with me and took a rickety subway rail to Zuccotti, we would spill out into the street in every direction and some of us would get run over my speeding taxis. But no one would burst from a Wall Street building to contest us. There aren't enough people in the world to rival the stigma of smallness. In order to start our war, we have to grow a little first.

Sunday, September 15, 2013

Twelve Months Ago

The news has exploded and among the rubble is the body of a twelve-year-old girl who plunged off the side of one of the buildings that made up the backdrop she hated and landed in Florida with two things: a collection of broken bones and a collection of broken lullabies - "sweet dreams."

Rebecca Sedwick was apparently attacked viciously on social media, dented with harsh realities and speared with harsher lies until she gave in to the voracious temptation of escape, as so many do. She was less than a year younger than I; presumably entering seventh, to my eighth, grade; most noticeably, this young promise was beautiful, like a bottle of red nail polish dropped and cracked on the floor, coloring the bottoms of your feet instead of the tops. If she had learned how to fly, she wouldn't have hit the ground so hard on her way down. If she had only had time to grow those wings, with neon plumage and hollow bones, if someone had taken the time to carry her while she practiced the gentle swooping motion to follow the air current...

When I was five, there was someone there to shape my hand into holding a pencil and give me my very first long division problem while they drank overpriced coffee. When I was ten, there was someone to give me an Ibuprofen the morning of a test when my back was aching as though shot with compacted fear. And when I was twelve and a bit, there was some unknown senior on the second floor to give me directions to my locker. And then, when I was thirteen, there was someone to email me the Spanish homework while I was buried in alternative music and new textbooks. I don't remember her last name from the attendance list last year, but I do remember the green scarf she was wearing the first time I saw her, and how nice it looked with her hazelnut eyes. Rebecca never got to remember. She stopped at twelve.

Saturday, September 14, 2013

Breath

I am ready to collapse under my purple sheets and hide, but I suppose that comes with toddlers' territory. Cast of characters: a two-year-old girl slicked down with tangible charisma and smiles, a three-year-old boy who is either on and explosively energetic or off and non responsive, and two weathered parents carrying tonnes of love and diapers. Needless to say, after searching for "the girl" (a statue in my grandparents' library) more than twenty times successively, playing pirate ships - "ON THE PIRATE SHIP, NOT ON THE SHARK BOAT!" - next to a tray covered in a collective of the most breakable pottery in the house, and falling asleep on the couch only to be awaken by a pillow thwacking against my head and an infectious giggle, I am not only thoroughly exhausted but also thoroughly intoxicated by the way my cousins didn't once stop to worry about the extreme darkness we drove off into after saying goodbye in pajamas.

I can't even pretend that I could take care of C and O alone; my sleep deficit would drown me first. Perhaps it is pretentious to even dream of chasing parenthood as though it is as automatic as adulthood. But then again, I was the only one who was willing to play catch for the millionth time. I was the first one to tickle their feet. Although I found solace in the remarkably calm dog whenever I lost it, I never let O out of my sight. I'd say I've got the makings of a loving guardian... just as soon as I purchase a couple hundred bottles of 5 Hour Energy. Good night.

Friday, September 13, 2013

Has Its Thorn

There is no situation in which a person receiving a brilliantly wrapped bouquet of roses would not be thrilled. No matter if the roses are red and a boyfriend has just swept onto the traditional knee bearing a velvety ring box; no matter if the roses are a light pink and the petals flutter around a woman in a white dress and exploded veil as though they are songbirds, echoing the violin's gentle march; no matter if the roses are yellow, or blue, or some other extravagant hue, presented to an A-lister at Broadway's backstage door - even if they are whisked away in a black limousine, you know they are smiling behind their sunglasses. So what do I do today, the last day of what has grown into an exhaustingly forced week at the back of the classroom? I cover myself in pink, blue, and white roses, on my hand-me-down skirt with the wrinkled hem, on my 99 cent purse, in my distinctly untamable hair.

I got exactly two compliments on the ensemble. There were both from L, an an honor. The first she gave me in an anything-but-deserted third floor hallway in front of the water fountain, wearing one of her signature dresses and bright orange tights. "Oh, I love your skirt! Actually - I love your whole outfit!" she cooed. I felt the happiness meter slide slowly from a three to a four. The second she gave me among the kind of insanity I've become use to bombarding me in our fourth floor hallway, wearing exactly the same thing (to no one's surprise). "I know I said it earlier but I have to say it again: I love your outfit. Meter: from a six to an eight. I could say the roses did it all on their own - it is Friday the thirteenth, after all, a good day to let loose and blame it all on the divine - but realistically, the roses didn't do anything except act as a catalyst for the customary kindness surrounding me, strewn against the familiar bits of insanity but always within a few feet. More than 220 of us in the same hallway. More than 220 chances to have your soul patched up for a day. There, in orange tights, stood mine. Again, I thanked her, and left, going towards my house but away from the people who have become my home.

Thursday, September 12, 2013

Scales

It was a mistake to try to boost my self-esteem by signing up for advanced musical theory when I have never heard of an augmented triad, much less recognized three key signatures in three seconds flat. It was a mistake to even open the quiz packet while everyone around me reviewed major scales, and my eyebrows hurt from always looking concerned. It was a really big mistake to act pretentious and artsy this morning, harmonizing to my voice memos and tapping my foot on the side of the hallway, hair swept over one eye.

Some people wouldn't even call me a musician. What kind of musician doesn't know an A major scale by heart, so well that they can rattle it off like a snake, so well that they could write it with one hand while seductively flipping their hair with the other? What kind of musician wears blue cable knits in ninety degree September to avoid showing her somewhat slanted shoulders, while J5 and A flaunt bra straps and defined cheekbones until early winter (not that I have any idea how they can keep a tan so long) and look like goddesses doing it? What kind of musician doesn't own a single bottle of perfume, celebrity, designer, or otherwise, and in case of emergency walks through a cloud of air freshener?

Then again...

Since the month began, I've written or started writing eight songs. Since the month began, I've dared myself to wear a pair of super skinny jeans - and succeeded with flying colors, if the color is maroon and it was flying because I had thirty seconds to get to Physics. Since the month began, I've sung at home, on the subway platform, on the subway, in the middle of a Spanish exercise, outside the seventh grade hallway, in a stairwell, in a restaurant... the list goes on. So an ultimatum: Do I belong in advanced musical theory? Not by any means. But do I belong in music? I belong in music until I stop needing to.

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

The Return

Last year is not gone yet. It is intact, fully fledged, and deliciously vivid in my memory as the best year of my life. But calendar pages turn past June and into September and all of that pent-up enthusiasm melts into a school year sure to be dotted with meltdowns and covered in midnight studying. We, the classmates, have dispersed, and far from our mothership, we are alien and strange. Already I sit at the back of the room, avoiding any opportunity to embarrass myself in front of clean slates who might one day be friends. Already I doodle on the cover of my music binder through lectures. Already I eat lunch in the computer lab, madly typing away on my English assignment. Already bits of the old me have become woven into the new one again, stained and frayed at edges.

It was clear to me on the subway this afternoon that the flair and exuberance that had sprouted out of me a year ago is withering. M2, J2, and R had not cut their hair, or grown more than an inch or so, or bought a collection of blacks to tuck away in a closet, chasing after their alternative side. If I closed my eyes, I could remember the way it felt to be amongst the warmth in their voices, and I could pretend we all had the same schedules in the front pockets of our bookbags. "Look, watch this bottle of Gatorade. Even if we fall over, it won't - no really trust me!" "Oh yeah?" "Most definitely!" The aquamarine sugar water danced around the rim from the Upper East to Alphabet City to Chinatown, but never spilled - M2 is usually right about these things. I can still reach out and come within inches of remembering her birthday... but the exact date has gone with the rest of her, away from me.

In fifty years, I'll look back, and last year will still be the best of my life. E2 put it best: "You can't expect the same. Last year was special." Every second was laced with perfections: J3, dubbed the Majestical Tricorn, blurting out something about a rogue potato. (Inside joke.) D apologizing in advance of everything, citing the Latin room electrocution incident with a miles-wide grin. (Inside joke.) The day we all skipped class to cry in front of each other and a counselor's yellow notepad. (Inside joke.) Each face, emblazoned with a soon-to-be-signature laugh, staying with me until I die, young forever (inside my heart.)