we sat on the bleachers at our old high school and reminisced on the days when a hot summer night meant bike rides and shenanigans in the park and bare feet. we talked about how at eighteen years old it seemed that everything in life was perfect, that we were invincible, had everything figured out. obstacles lay ahead and we knew they involved goodbyes, but we let our hair down and soaked up every hour of the boise heat. we dropped watermelons off of parking garages and climbed up camelsback in the dark. we drove too fast, played our music too loud. the world couldn’t touch us. we were young. free. naive. we thought our conversations went deeper than our skin and that everything was beautiful.

& it was.

but we were unaware of the world’s ability to shake us. what a difference a new perspective could make. how knowledge could etch itself into our fabrics so tightly that our thought processes would become something we previously would’ve deemed foreign. we’ve spent three years in completely different places, studying polar opposite subjects, and living contrasting lifestyles. but somehow sitting there, cigar in hand and smoke encircling us, on those metal benches, time seemed to stand still. our paths had diverged and now converged at the place where we had shared so many memories. and for a moment, nothing seemed to matter. not the new values we’ve uptaken, not the new differences in faith, not the new styles on our frames. but then all at once i remembered how much has changed. how much i have changed. how much i have been stretched and joyed and pained. how much i have grown into myself. 

& i breathed a heavy sigh of nostalgic contentment.