it felt surreal. today we’re celebrating each other’s victories after the downhill, uphill encounters in college, and the next thing we’re moving away out of town, to a city unknown to our usual, plain, and cliche mornings.

it never occurred to me—the awkward distance between holding my career in my dainty hands and the end of the long series of unwanted nights in college.

the cat’s fur on my long rugged pants, the usual, same old album playing in the background, will never greet the mundane night before sleep. the spaghetti-strap clothes i steal from my mother’s closet will seem far away now.

it used to scare me, the idea of maneuvering life in uncertainty, but then again, what choice does a woman with dreams have but to persevere in a place she thinks will push her one step closer to the reality written in the old, dusted journal?