brownian motion

―midsentence, as if no time had passed. my eyes wandered refocusing in the darkness and you were there, silhouette carved in the hush between streetlamp and shadow, unchanged or nearly so from when you last waved goodbye.

it’s nice to see you again said the quiet voice that came through the stillness and facing one another we stood, me, the one who left―and you, the one who stayed―each with our own regrets hidden like pebbles in jacket pockets, unvoiced but worn all the same, and though you sounded stronger and more independent you were you still you

and i drew myself close next to you and we walked; we walked through the streets on the liveliest night of the year, the night the old guard descends upon this provincial college town, ghosts drawn to the flame of fireworks or perhaps departed souls following a trail of cempasúchil to the buildings lit up in deep black and brilliant orange; we walked and the past brushed against our sleeves like a crowd we couldn't quite see; we walked in circles and then in squares, and probably after a few pentagons at long last we left the waves of people metastasizing across the sidewalks and we passed the old school now stale and silent, its gothic battlements crumbling, its windows cataracted and blind but our words continued in gentle ebbs and flows and slowly the moonlight glimmered upon familiar road-signs and after a teetering moment i vanished leaving a strand of conversation whistling in the wind waiting to be picked up―