I oftentimes wake after long hours of talking to people I haven’t seen for what feels like decades, in my lily-white dreams. Sometimes it really is a decade; sometimes they are dead and I am remembering happier times. But when they are alive and well, and I feel fondly towards them, in my half-awake state, I wish to continue the conversation I had with them, sitting to their right on a bar stool, sipping at my rum between sentences. With my eyes still closed, my body still warm under the covers, I think well of the world, and want nothing more than to see these people again, and talk idly, as we did between classes in high school, or out in the fields of the midwest. But in the true waking hours, as I sit with my tea in front of my computer, I do not know if they feel the same towards me. There is a strange social wall that appears when you move or go off to college; if you don’t call your friends once a week or write them letters... they are suddenly not your friends. They disappear off the edge of the earth. They are living their own lives, just as I should be living mine, but there are so many moments when I think of our old camaraderie, and I sincerely, sorely miss the jokes, the banter, and the pranks. But we are older now. Older than I realize, I think. And such a time is not to come again. I linger over the keyboard, hesitating to even say hello. It should not be so difficult to reach out to a friend. But after many years... it is.
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