Can I be your Memory?

I really miss my friends. Mammoth has been wonderful with all its natural wonder and high school laughter. But I miss people my age. I miss the sidewalk of the VK courtyard and the dirt on the old track and the baseball field at night with its stars that stretch for miles while we slouched in the stands and grinned.

I miss Butterfly beach and the black waves after dark that crash at your feet as you dangle them over the ledge. I miss State Street in the afternoon, when Westmont students crowd the corners and wave "hello" even if you've never talked to them before because they're Westmont and you're Westmont and that makes you Kin if not Same.

And even if we didn't have much school pride, or enthusiasm for section events, or rolled our eyes at that one professor that droned too long (or the student that did the same);

Even if the campus crowds with bungaloes and tractors where there used to be trees,

The path still winds through the undergrowth: the one that Willis snaked around the perimeter, the one that's broken up with streams and rocks and wildlife and silence.


the path still creeps beneath the bridge and through the trees past Kerwood and in the center of the formal gardens to end at the

little: white: Chapel
that

Sings stained-glass hymns after dark, as a Somebody, a Same, the Kin, presses piano keys
by candlelight.