(Part I)
“So what have you been up to for the last ten years?” she says, “I know, I know, that’s a lot to summarize. Give me the highlights.” 

“Oh god…um…well, went to school—it was fine—graduated, got a job shortly after, loved it, hated it, am okay with it now. I moved several times, narrowed down my list of close friends to five people, went through multiple obsessions, day in, day out. I try to not feel restless all the time but I’m not good at doing things on a whim. I’ve travelled here and there, but never that far. I started smoking. Actually—do you mind?”

She shakes her head no so I pull out a pack of cigarettes from my pocket.

“Actually, can I have one I hate to be that—”

“Say no more.”

I grab two and hand her one. She puts it in her mouth and I light it, her hand shrouding the wind from the flame, our fingers grazing. I light mine. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale.

“I mean, man, that’s all the boring stuff that I’ve done. Shit you talk about with co-workers. I always have a hard time coming up with anything interesting to say despite having done interesting things.”

“Oh yeah?” Exhale. “Like what?”

“Um…let’s see. You know, the problem is that it all seems so mundane, they’re all ‘ you had to be there’ kind of moments.”

“Try me.”

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Hold. Exhale.

“Okay so they’re less stories, more moments. I’ve been trying to dedicate myself to my friends. We’ve had some absurdly good moments. Conversations that veered from sports to horror movies to space to physics to religion or metaphysics. Staying up until 7:00 am drinking whiskey on the front steps of a friend’s apartment, talking about art and music and nothing all at the same time. I got lost in Brooklyn at 3:00 am by myself and was totally okay with it. I watched a meteor shower. Had a five hour conversation with strangers on an airplane. Watched fireworks. Stared into fires in silence. We once replaced most of the words of the Lord’s Prayer with the word ‘balls’ and thought we were hilarious. Played mini-golf. Went to an open mic poetry night and I read a poem I wrote on a napkin about a mouse. God, so much and so little.”

All ashes. It all falls apart with a simple flick. I take another and light it. Inhale.

There is a light breeze and through the darkness I can barely make out the branches of the trees waving back and forth, back and forth, slowly. A few clouds obscure the moon for a moment and we are sitting in darkness, in silence. For a second I forget where I am and then look over to see her smiling at me and I come rushing back to the scene.

“Wow, it sounds like you’ve done well. That all sounds so awesome.”

“Oh they were awesome. So much fun.”

“Then why do you look disappointed?”

“Haha do I? Whoops. Um, yeah, I don’t know—and some I just remembered while I was talking—just makes me…I don’t know…”

“What? Makes you what?”

“Well, those are all the good things—well, not all the good things but you know what I mean. There were so many bad times too. Stuff I’d rather not recite.”

“Well of course there were! I mean, you can’t expect it all to be non-stop positivity. I guess, like, what do you dislike about having those negative moments so much?”

“I think just how much space they take up in my head—how much they remind me of how horrible I’ve been.”

“Jesus, shouldn’t they remind you how far you’ve come along? How much you’ve progressed?”

“Yeah…yeah, I suppose it should. I think I forget to look at my life as an arc, with an origin and destination. I tend to just see it as a spiral, a clusterfuck of moments.”

I’m chain smoking now. I think I’ve had three in a row. I can feel it. All over. I think my hands are shaking but I don’t want to check. She’s staring at the water while she kicks her feet back and forth, forward and backward, to and fro. The moon is bright and full and its brightness is reflecting off the waves in the water and casting its light into our faces and eyes.

“Anyway, god, enough about me. Sorry…I get caught up talking about myself. It’s such an annoying trait, I know.”

She looks at me. Moonlight.