Time circles around, and time closes in on itself. Time moves forward (always forward), but the further you go, the more you're looking back. “You won't believe how backwards you'll dream one day,” Marina Keegan wrote, before she was gone. And it's true. I spent my childhood looking for the magic that comes next. I lived years swirling around inside exquisite longing, the feeling of being not quite where I belong—that exotic agony of…waiting.

It was a magic of boy crushes and dancing on second-hand couches with friends. And it was a magic of wishes, on stars and freshly fallen snow, and the scent of October creeping around the corner. The yearning was something I could never quite name, so I filled it with every story I would want to tell when I grew old. 

Life, back then, felt paper-thin. Like a child holding a pencil in her fist, drawing too-sharp lines and any moment she might punch a hole through her drawing, in the universe or time, and we'd

all

fall

through. 

It stayed in one piece though—the paper and the world. 

This is the season one day you'll look back on and say, "Remember when...?" 

Remember when we climbed to the top of the fire tower by Smith Lake?

Remember the rope swing, and the murky, still water below?

Remember the boy who wrote you poetry?

Remember summers swimming in the creek?

Remember your first love? Your first dog? How your heart broke when you found her lying in the backyard by the fence, waiting for you to come home? Remember your dad crying on the porch when you left Cheryl Ct. for the first time?

Remember when you danced on a stage at the end of 12th Avenue? 

Remember when the only thing left to do was....everything?

I remember that.