The air is stuffy and warm, and keeping my eyes open feels like a losing battle. Half of me cannot handle another voice, another statement, another human within my 10-foot radius. The other half recognizes the futile fight against obligation, and thus, here I am.
My conscience screams at me, urging me to reject any screen—I feel like my eyes are bleeding. I have a tight timeframe, and I intend to maximize every minute even though fatigue is slowly taking over, so I continue my somewhat frantic, somewhat languid work. I sit and fidget and type and think and think out loud, and I look up.
I’d let my companions’ chatter subside to a background murmur in the pursuit of productivity, but my focus breaks, my vision shifts, and I let myself be carried back to the world in front of me. My attention is directed across the plastic tables, and I register the grin of a somewhat new but nonetheless close friend. His smile complements the voice of a girl who I’ve known for much longer, her slightly off-pitch tune steadily progressing.
Next to her, he listens, and a grin breaks out across his face. He laughs in his unapologetic way, and she remains focused on her own world.
The former is a reaction to the latter because of her ardor for life and his inclination to tease. With the room’s music that I’ve tuned out, the renditions of the songs we all know, she sings along because she knows every word. I guess this proves there’s always more to learn about a person: I know her like I know few others, and I am still surprised by the casual conversations we’ve never had.
She sits in the posture of someone devoted to her goals, snacking while contemplating, writing, questioning, erasing, and rewriting. Doing this, she absentmindedly dedicates herself to a soundtrack of her childhood without paying attention to the details, her tune, or anything but her task at hand. She is carried away by the music and the rush of life and the way that the world will keep moving, and she intends to stay on pace with it.
The moment fades like her voice, and I wish I could capture these seconds of exhaustion and discomfort because none of it seems as dire with them across from me. Because they are here, and they are together, and they have come from separate spheres of every category imaginable, but somehow, they have convened. As their dissimilar selves tie another strand of connection to each other, I bookmark this feeling.
In my mind, I capture the persistence, the smiles, the walls, and what it feels like for my solemn expression to crumble to a smile over the love I have for a point in time that’s already dissolving. I note that this moment will be what I want to remember.
This is what I’ll bottle and store away, the images that will come to mind when I’m hit by a wave of reflection. Not the events. Not formality, forced conversation, small talk, tests, or sports. This moment and every other that screams to me to take this and to hold onto it and to savor it because, once it’s gone, it won’t return.
The feeling will mold itself into other moments, I’m sure, but it won’t be with these two, and it won’t be with these two together. It will appear with other people, in new places, with faces I love, with those I’ve met. And when it returns, which it inevitably will, I will savor it, grin, and barely think twice.
