Soon I’ll be leaving for OSAI. The entire year has basically been a sort of hopeful elegy. I can’t help but think how bizarre everything will be. I’m afraid I’ll feel like I’m reliving something, like I’m drawing nearer to a provenance, or unifying with myself after a surreal dichotomy, finding the origin of faith and then proving the existence of the elusive. But I know it won’t be like that. It will be a longing. A desire for something that doesn’t exist. I’m so afraid of missing things. Many times over I have admitted to playing the romantic martyr. The girl who wants nothing more than to sit contentedly by herself and delight in the sum of her lonely heart, all the while feeling as if she could open the portals of poetry and be one more tragic heroine. Her life’s story short and sweet, and perfectly immortalized in iambic pentameter. But that’s the thing: the act of perpetuity resurrects the pain, which of course only corresponds perfectly with drama. Summer is when I’m the worst.. the most emotive and bright-eyed. Because summer represents something, from then until now things have changed. These are the few months I spend in evaluation. I step out of my life and become the onlooker. A third party whose sole job is to lament yesterday while cleverly devising a strategy for equaling it. I’ve found it worlds easier to compare one’s life when placed in the same situation at different times. Thus OSAI. I’m afraid last summer did not end on a positive note. Let’s see. I was “dating” Brendan. Although, we didn’t call it that. (Men and commitment is a LONG story.) I think the proper title would have been, “Be good friends, listen to music while making out and despite the lack of relationship related definition be sure to get jealous when we kiss other people.” Which, in fact, did happen. Yet another tiresome tale best left untold. A week later at OSAI I met Kyle. 48 hours later we were inseparable. Two months later we weren’t speaking. Even though I’m not depressed over the past, it is still the past, and merits recollection. And so I wonder what it will feel like to walk down by the river and think, “This is where we sat the day we were late for class.” The parking lot: This is where we danced in the rain. The cave: This is where we were shadows. Plato. The rock: This is where you kissed me or maybe it was the mist, the mountains, the cliché postcards of a getaway that just happened to taste too much like your lips. How will I deal with the amphitheater? Its warm stones of sienna and canopy of summer switching from leaves to sky to sun. This is where we read poetry. Our poetry. Your arms. My mouth. That day I sat down to play the piano, my hands on the keys, the notes sauntering and then fading as you neglect to notice because your music is louder, your hands are stronger, my skin, you said, is softer. Of course I falter, kneel beneath the air. The evening has been an injection - a penetration. Later on, you and I in have snuck into the ballet room, a crime I have committed before. (One can never stop dancing.) Then I remember we had to leave. And when we left, the door was still open and so subtly I had forgotten to enclose the keys in their narrow casket. Later on, I had hoped, we might journey backwards through stars to finish our song.