gain, and the renewed festivities in the air bring me back to that epoch, that carefully partitioned meadow that i often look at longingly from behind a glass wall. it smells like fresh sheets and the melting evening sun. it sounds like the soft giggles of secret sex. it’s so very, very tempting and it lies there, beckoning me to come in, and it promises to be so warm — but like everything else in history, it is inaccessible to me because i am older now. i have grown and i have moved on. for every day that i wake up and think, shit, i’m late for class, i am really moving one day away from it, further and further until it is displaced from me and mine and i will no longer remember the sounds and the smells and how he looked as he watched me put on makeup. i was putting on eyeliner. i saw him watching from the mirror, so i turned around and asked, what? nothing, he said, it’s just cool that i’m dating a girly girl. we’re not dating, i wanted to say. are we? then we slipped out of the house together, my hand safe and snug in his pocket, my heart comfortably resting on his, and he held me close in the blustering winds. one foot rule, okay? that’s what we decided on. we had to keep a distance of one foot from each other for the night. this is my friend! i introduced him. i basked in the awkwardness with which he handled my friends, and me, as i playfully ruffled all the seams of his composure within a one foot radius. he sat beside me during dinner, and i complained loudly, emily make him stop! he’s flirting with me! and emily shouted over, yeah stop flirting with her! he blushed hard and i laughed cruelly with emily. later that night, when the one foot rule had dissipated and we were entwined and warm under the sheets, i giggled and apologized for being mean. he smiled, kissed me, and we fell asleep holding hands. it’s always like that. it’s always about me being mean for the sake of fun and glittery excitement, while he just kisses me and waits patiently until i’m bored of the game du jour, and i return to him, pouting. but i like the fun and the excitement. i can’t give it up, no matter what month of the year it is. there is a pace, and i wanted him to run with me too. but everything happened so long ago, and i’m so in danger of forgetting him. today i did not think about him at all. i appreciated the realization that i had simply forgot to keep him at the fringes of my mind, if not at the very center. it made me feel like i was finally in control. but then it occurred to me that i’ve only been awake for three hours today, and three hours of not thinking about him is not very substantial. nevertheless it’s a start. i’m thinking less and less about him, and every day that i wake up is another day further from ’some month’ in the many months of my life.