By Julia Catalano
It’s the end of May, three years ago. We pass a joint on the ferry and get lost until the line for Terminal 5 snaps into view. We pass through metal detectors, hard and cold in a sea of warm bodies. The guards dig into our bags like bees to pollen. You pull me aside and say let’s make sure our kids won’t have to walk through radars.
Syracuse is quiet at dawn. I wake before the sun, before the bluejay that chirps at my withering flower pot.
We FaceTimed until my eyelids gave into gravity, smile wearing into the empty house for six.
I fold my laundry.
An ant crawls across the hardwood, an omen of Spring.
We sling back seven dollar rum and cokes and watch the crowd shake below us like riptides. We mock our past selves, who lined up at six a.m., who craved the weight of bodies outside of their own. How we trusted strangers to carry us. How we bragged about our barricade bruised thighs, the rasp of our hollowed voices. Tomorrow your cat will die, but we don’t know this yet. We scream the loudest. We freak out at our favorite song. We go back to the bar.
The air dropped thirty degrees overnight.
In Staten Island the day is warm.
In Syracuse sun beams spill across kitchen sinks, illusions of heat planted by a March morning.
I should be seeing you this week. We should be saying goodbye again, cursing time for never leaving room for us to lie in it.
We should be thinking of summer.
We wander past closed car dealerships, red lights buzzing against our skulls. We pee by a dumpster and you overdraw your lips in mauve. In three days I’ll have a breakdown, but we don’t know this yet. We laugh until we bleed into night, until we’re out of blood, until the ferry collides with the dock. In three years, the concerts will be canceled. But we don’t know this yet. I fall asleep against your shoulder on the train. The world tumbles on the other side of the window. A man spits out vape smoke in the corner. You kill an ant beneath your foot. Somewhere, our kids are dreaming.
Julia Catalano is a senior theater management major.
