april

• I am sitting on the kitchen floor with Aryn. We have been here for a while. We have watched it get dark. There is a bottle of wine divided between two large glasses and a bowl of salsa between us. There is a spot of salsa dried on the floor because I dropped it there an hour ago and we both ignored it. We talk about what we want to be when we grow up, who we want to become, where we'd like to go. We paint our nails with sparkles and laugh.
• I am stirring beans with fragrant spices in the tiny, bright kitchen. I can see out of the window that the neighbors are grilling something and drinking out of red plastic cups on their back porch. They are only a few feet away from me, though I couldn't reach them if I tried to jump there from here. I stir the beans as the sun begins to set, pooling in warm orangey colors. We listen to songs from the rent soundtrack (everything except over the moon, we only listen to the beginning of that because in cyberland we only drink...diet coke). We sing along as we go outside into the cool, light air to smoke a cigarette.

may

• We are all in Kevin's living room, empty except a couch and a handful of chairs. A bottle of wine is opened as the sun sets and we drink greedily and speak of the doom of our generation. Archer plays in the background but it is completely ignored. We slide on shoes and head to the roof and everything is lit up. Mercy flight helicopters land on the roof of the nearby hospital, noisily hovering. This makes me sad. When we go back down to Kevin's apartment everything is glowing and my heart feels full of hope for the summer.

september

• Christian and I are standing in the street. I have a dress laid over my arm. We are standing and smoking and talking and every once in a while we meet each others eyes and then look away quickly. We talk about Aryn's birthday and our plans for the fall and cats. He rests his right foot against my tire and leans back and my ankles are crossed as I lean against my small blue car. Cars pass slow with their headlights on so bright. A bouncer yells at someone about to steal a bicycle and we look on in interest, delaying the moment when one of us must awkwardly end the conversation. We hug goodbye quickly and walk away without another word.
• Aryn and I are sitting in her spare room, Kevin and Christian seated across from us on the opposite side of the glass top table. We are drinking champagne as we sit in a circle, passing the cheap bottles around, savoring the bubbles and flinching slightly at the taste. We are talking about our plans for fall and winter. Everyone is smiling and laughing and I am sitting right next to the cats' litter box. It smells terrible but I turn my head away from it slightly. Everyone is happy and hopeful.
• Christian, Aryn and I are laying on the futon. We were drunk all weekend and it feels like we haven't showered in a long time because of the booze. We have been there all day, watching movies and drifting in and out of naps. The blankets are heavy, but it's not quite cold yet so everyone sweats. I am in the middle and it is uncomfortably warm, but I am happy and snuggle into both of them anyway. The cats prowl around us, alternately cuddling and attacking. We start to get punchy and laugh uncontrollably about Aryn attempting to reach the fairy wings on her wall with just her foot, then we start talking about bell graphs and regular graphs, graphing our qualities in the order we are laying. "The graph goes up like this, we are laying from least to most people slept with." "The graph goes like this in attractiveness, no like this, no like this." We laugh until it is painful. Someone smells like b.o., but none of us can tell who it is so we all reapply deodorant and lay back down happily.