Page 16 - Demo

My favorite thing was walking with you.
Immaculately clean sidewalks, skyscrapers reaching up high above our heads, signs in red and blue and green adorning gray-scale, like New Year’s and Inde- pendence Day and Christmas.
There were so many people, but no one saw when you took my hand. It was completely juvenile, the way that I pursed my lips, stared at my feet moving in time with yours, and couldn’t bring myself to stop thinking about what all these nonexistent onlookers could be thinking, even against my better judgment.
You made me feel like a child, but only in the best of ways. It was like I was suddenly re-experiencing the world as if it was the rst time. I could re-analyze and reinvent everything that I thought I had been grounded on because you lifted me and twirled me about and the view was new and unfamiliar from way up high above
the buildings and into the constellations.
When nerves left me enough to look up and see your face, you were looking at me, and you laughed at me a little, which made my mouth spring open in the likeness of a jack-in-the-box and my mind sputter as if it was a record jittering on a Victrola.
It had been a night of drinks and karaoke and you telling me that you liked my pineapple earrings.
I barely knew you, but, waiting beside you amongst faces only minutely more unfamiliar than yours, I could have sworn that I did.
To be naive was the best part of those proceeding days and months. I loved watching you go on, seeing you o , and only looking forward.
“I’ll see you later.” “Yes, you will!”
13
Walk Mariah Giffey