The Friday Night

By Katie Gergel

 

We sat there with our futures

and four soda cans that had long since lost their fizz.

The doorstep was bathed in ghostly light

cast by the silvery sister of the sun,

and the noise of the surrounding world

had become merely background music.

 

It was just like any other Friday night,

except it wasn’t. Not at all.

We each had a lump in the back of our throats.

We each had a thought lurking in the back of our minds,

masked only by the thin, unconvincing curtain of

Things Won’t Change.

 

The night found itself with the same old conversation,

the same old teases and laughs.

But every so often it found quiet –

a void allowing the lurking thought to manifest,

causing a skipped heartbeat or a hitch in breath

drowned out quickly by a joke no one listens to.

 

There comes a time in which you realize

the dual nature of memories.

You have the beautiful ability to relive the Good Old Days,

yet they have become a disjointed movie

in which the important details have been cut for time,

leaving both plot breaks and heartbreaks.

 

On that night, with my friends and the moon,

I was watching a movie produced by My Brain Studios.

Memories flashed like bursts of lightning

and as the end credits finally rolled,

the lurking thought appeared –

A Film By: Things Will Not Be The Same

 

I left that night with a reluctant “See you later”,

Realizing that for the first time,

“later” will not be school on Monday,

or at dinner the next Friday.

For the first time, I don’t know for sure exactly

what “later” means.

 

All I know is that there are more movies to be made.

And we will always have this doorstep.

A constant among uncertainty, it will wait for us.

And we will wait for each other.