Once

Written on a subway ride while working on coding practice problems. A song came on and I grew distracted and suddenly pensive. The following few lines were the result.

For Emma, Forever Ago: Times frozen in sound. The album is like a childhood desk drawer, opened occasionally to look on old tokens and reflect.

Re: Stacks starts again and my mind drifts, floating through a haze of nostalgia and vague regrets where finally it alights upon time real and unreal. Memories of daily laughter. Of crude jokes and furtive glances. Of splits, scores, races, and recitals. Black cows and used cars, backyard jams and downtown jambas. Of wondering hopes and late-night hijinx. Of broken rules and clumsy romance. Of rolling green hills and dew fading as a crisp sunrise chases away the fog.

Cares were small then, and plans were broad and optimistic, like our smiles. The next four years stretched out before us like the running trail trod that day: just enough mystery for exploration and yet the safety and predictability of all finite paths. You came out the other side more or less how you came in, sometimes tired and other times just stronger. But not altogether different. And so it would go, surely.

Surely.