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They are young

There are tiny moments. They are sporadic. There is sometimes music beating time with the moments, and silence to mark the others.
She feels a lifetime in a moment, a mere minute in a year. This is the glory of youth.
James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, in black and white glory, line her walls- a tribute to a past she has not known, nor will she ever.
She reads On the Road and fancies herself a female Kerouac, she watches obscure movies at her tiny theater off Rural Rd. and fancies herself an amateur Siskel, but really what she is is young.
She closes her mouth in horror as her friends spin brodies off the Salt River Project, and in silence, watches the Phi Sigs play basketball out her window. She makes it to class when she can, and absorbs what she can, but really what she is is young.
She meets a boy at a campus party. He is lanky, she is lonely. they strike up a conversation, as it goes. She wants to be anywhere but here, anyone but this, but it sticks, and she is.
She studies, she forgets to study. She yearns, she longs to yearn, and she grows with each ticking moment, and learns while growing.
She watches the students traverse the campus, and pretends they are each as lost as she, she who envisions campus in a snow globe, and still counts signatures in her yearbook. The girls in their sorority gear, and the boys who lust after the girls in sorority gear...they are not ninth floor material. For the ones on the ninth floor have embraced their difference.
They are East Coasters. They have Someone back home. They protest while they obey, and regret only afterward.
She goes with him to a movie, only for lack of something else to do. And in the profile of the screen, she is lost in a possibility.
She is suddenly huge in a tiny world, and all makes sense.
There is a phoning, and a random nuance of astrology, and a poster of a swamp girl with outstretched hands, and she has lost herself in the cliche.
They are young. This is right.

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