Prose poem
See us dancing sloppily in a student-housing living room empty of furniture, Busch Light sloshing up from the cans in our hands, splashing onto our knuckles, our jeans, the linoleum floor. Hear us singing in unison — to each other, reaching far beyond our range, howling — to the songs we used to listen to together, drunk or not drunk, high or not high, but mostly drunk and high. Try not to feel too sorry for the one of us who already looks ten years older than when we graduated, even though it has only been five, and who is swaying woozily by himself in the corner, barely able to keep his eyes open, and try not to judge too harshly the two of us who are grinding like we used to grind when we were a couple, even though we both have “significant others” back in the places we now live. Technically, the “significant others” had been invited to the reunion, but we and they both knew they shouldn’t actually come. They would’ve been outsiders, aliens to our planet of the past, and worse, witnesses to our strange reversions, which are difficult enough for us to stomach.
How did we get here? you, and we, might ask. Well. Years ago, we materialized in our dorm rooms and put up posters. We shook hands with the stranger with whom we would be sharing the room for the night, and for the next nine months, for that matter, regardless of whether we got along. In time, we found each other. Down the hall, or at the party, or after the lecture, or sketching nudes side by side in Intro to Drawing. Then we did all of these things together. We dressed up like cowboys and Catholic schoolgirls, because access to the keg required it. We whispered distractedly across tables in the library because we required reprieve from our work. We took classes together when we could, and sometimes we talked about big-picture stuff and got excited about ideas. More often, we ordered pizzas to our dorms in the middle of the night because we were hungry, but more importantly, because we could. We did all these things and so many more — so, so many more — because we were on our own, together, and we were figuring out how to be ourselves. We did all of these things, and all these things happened, and then we went away because we had to. We had stayed our term, upheld our end of the deal, earned the diploma we came to earn, and there was nothing left for us there in that temporary haven, so we scattered.
Some of us formed alliances and struck out together, establishing little settlements of us here and there in the world. Many of us went down the river to the Big City. There are tales of ones who set out alone, never to be seen by any of us again. We were saplings, replanting ourselves, trying to find spots where we could thrive. Some needed space to breathe, others needed the buzz of urbanity and cultural stimulation, and many went for something in between. There were artist communities and internships, restaurant jobs and grad school, fledgling businesses and house painting. Money was made and not made, rent was paid and not paid. Pairs who had left in love stayed in love and did not stay in love. New love was found, and then lost again. Some of our parents died. A couple of us even died. We searched for meaning, finding and not finding it. We found ourselves, and then found ourselves more lost than ever before. And then we found ourselves back here, in this empty living room, this room where some of us lived five years ago but where none of us live now and none of us will ever live again, behaving like maybe nothing much is different, even though different is what it is the most.
