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.

the Swan Queen

The theater emptied quietly. Thursday night, there were only a handfull of patrons there. Besides, it had been running for a while. We parted ways on Broadway, she found a cab quickly while I pulled my clothes tighter, tried to catch my breath. The New York night was freezing again. Stiff fingers tried desperately to roll a cigarette, finally I had to stop in the street. I stuck my trembling hands in my coat pockets and smoked with the cigarette resting between my lips all the way down west 10th.

The film stayed with me as I walked home. It heightened every sense. I heard the steady beat of my heels against the concrete, it echoed against the quiet townhouse bricks and reassured me. Lights strung in trees seemed to shine brighter, the cold was sharper. People walking past didn't affect me. I felt a dance move in me, every muscle tensed, relaxed, twisted and leapt, my eyes alert. Battles of a dark heart and a frail mind, or perhaps the opposite, dueling and teasing within me.

I suppose the story was not new. I suppose the insight was not revealing. We already have the answers within us. We already know what they say. The magic lies in having those feelings stirred anew.

I felt it.

Perfect.

I was perfect.