I had a dream I was 19 again. It was late at night, at Denny’s, my hair cut short again. We were in the back corner booth, in the smoking section (back when they still had one). There was this feeling of anticipation that summer. I remember it vividly. I felt it crawling all over me, in my 19 dream. I was still linking my fingers with his. Still tying our names together into one. I swear, I could smell the cologne he used to wear when I woke up this morning. I’m still shaking that scent from me now. It’s been hours since I woke up. Hours since I was in that dream, in that booth, with my cut short again hair.

“If you weren’t real,
I would make you up.”

It’s not a time I want to return to, well not right now, anyway. It’s a snapshot time from my life that I tend to idealize, especially in looks back, and in short stories I try to pass off as fiction. There was some kind of magic in who I was at 19. Magic, and a hell of a lot of naivete.

Sometimes I’d like to just visit her, me at 19. Maybe just watch from the sidelines, like in a dream. I don’t know what, or if, I’d tell her anything. I’m not sure there are many things I’d want to have changed, especially if it would mean the me I am not would not be me anymore. So maybe just a visit to glimpse who I was. Me at 19. Like in last night’s dream.