nobody tells you how those nights that stand out in your memory—levee sunset nights, hurricane nights, first kiss nights, homesick sleepover nights, nights when you stood at your bedroom window and looked at the lilies one porch over and thought they would stand out, singular and crystallized, in your memory forever—they aren’t really anything. they’re everything, and they’re nothing. they make you who you are, and they happen at the same time a twenty-three-year-old a million miles away is warming up some leftovers, turning in early, switching off the lamp. they’re so easy to lose. you don’t learn until you’re older how to zoom out of that extreme proximity and make it fit into the bigger picture of your life.
