An ode to then

A literary break...

Guest Contributor: AKR

(Got one of your own? Send it over. If it's good -- hell, even halfway decent -- we'll throw it on the fire)



Sometimes, in the middle of a gray day in the middle of this gray life, I think about when we were together.

There we all are in a big room. It might be up in the dorm, it might be at the house on Colonial or it might be in one of the joints downtown. It’s noisy and smoky and I’m standing in one corner, surrounded by some of our friends: Jim and Annie, maybe it’s the Chief, Dani and Gunner, or Kim, Pete or Carey. It’s all good, and I’m grinning from ear to ear. Of course I was; I went through that whole time up there smiling from Day One to graduation, basking in the joy of being surrounded by those people I was incredibly happy to be around, day after day after day.

I look across and there you are on the other side, sitting at a table with some of the others: maybe it’s Cammie, Joni or Doc; or Cliffy, JR and Carol. The same thing; everyone is carrying on about the mundane nothingness that was our life, perfectly content to the life in that Great Cocoon, where we weren’t quite kids but at the same time we weren’t quite adults, either. Like Indians consigned to the reservation because there wasn’t anywhere else for us to go, except we knew we’d eventually get kicked off and have to deal with another world and another life. But we had no conception of what it would be like; nor did it ever occur to us that we’d all do it without each other.

Then our eyes meet. You send me your magic: the quick tilt of the head, the kiss and the quick wink. Like you did hundreds of times. As I think back now, I just realized that you always tilted it in one direction; it was always to your right. And I think you always winked with the right eye, too. I can’t remember your first roommate, but I remember that. You never failed; if we weren’t side by side, you’d deliver that magic as only you could.

For right then and there, I was as happy as I ever needed to be. It just took me all this time to realize it. Especially since I never saw you again after I left you behind.