In 10 Years

You’re wearing a dress – silky, blue, shows off your figure, which is quite nice, actually, though it could be better. No matter, the nature of the dress hides flaws well, as long you stand straight and tall. Your shoes are high heeled and bright red, your tights are subtly lacy, and your hair, bouncy as always, is swirled around and pinned up tonight. A curl here and there will escape, and due to the constant pushing back of your bangs they’ve developed a little wave up at the top. You wish that wouldn’t always happen, but you tuck them behind your ear (though they won’t stay), and laugh at something somebody said, under the golden chandelier, the twinkling lights that highlight everyone’s faces in the most attractive way. You’ve got some water in a glass that you hold as if it is champagne, and you’re forcibly reminded of the first time you went to an MIT frat – awkward and strange and out-of-your-comfort-zone and wishing that somebody would take an interest in you. But you push that to the back of your mind – you’re here, now, and you’re engaged and you may be a bit poor but you’ve managed to keep the house, small as it is, pretty and warm.

You’re glowing, you are. You know everyone here so well – they’re your classmates and your friends and your coworkers – and you’re so sophisticated and so gorgeous in the dimmed lighting, you’re floating here and there, gliding, dancing over the hardwood floor – but just for this night. After this is done and the dishes get cleaned and you’re in your pajamas again you wish for the unsophisticated common room dance parties and the obnoxious laughter and stupid jokes and lying all over each other in the hallway, and you wonder how this happened. How it is that you are now putting away the goat cheese and the lasagna and the french bread in your own place and you’re going to sleep without having people to talk to and so this is growing up, huh. But when the heels come off and the computer is turned on and you pull up tumblr again and reblog some Harry Potter artwork and remember some Glee music and maybe there’s one of those troll pictures still hanging around that you laugh at a little bit, you remember who you are and where you come from. You’re back to being that 18 year old kid sitting up late at night in her bed or in her friend’s room laughing about nothing and talking about sex and saying things like melonfuckers and then you smile and turn off the light because you’ll always be her, always, as long you still remember.

 

Advertisement