A Plague On Both Your Houses

We were young; we knew not yet that the world did not revolve around us. Our world was that small town, those rules, a universe of feelings fit into yet-small bodies, unexperienced, flawless. We navigated our presents without care for our futures, and even the new morning could see our dispositions changed. We sat in the back of the movie theater and drowned in Shakespeare one night, each other's lips the next. All the world was a stage and yet we required it not, our stage was so small, so contained.

Are we the same people, still? With our children, our careers, our stage so much larger, our considerations so much more complex, are we still the eager youths we once were?

Perhaps the question is best left unanswered, the ghosts best left unstirred. We know how it ends; why wait until the final breath, hoping for altered pasts that may save the future? The exit music plays, we leave the theater and return to our real lives, and everything has changed.

That's the only fact that remains the same.