We had taken a bench

We had finished the semester, stepped out of the last class. The walk on campus after a tough semester finishes must share something emotionally diminished, yet affiliated, to release from prison. Despite however many nights you've been awake, filled with anxiety and determination, despite the total emptiness of barreled exhaustion, everything, all senses are piqued and its common to be in a state of absolute absorption. I had been walking slower than usual in this pocket of dense time. Its the binge and purge ratio of life that has always been the only way i've managed to get anything of value ever done. These dazed, fecund walks were the closest i'd ever get to victory marches.

I'd been walking through the Plaza of the Americas and I had my eye on this bench in the corner. It was perhaps the busiest intersection on campus. Everyone was carrying forth, heading or returning from a class, filled with intention. There were still several days of exams left to go. Everyone was rushing and flustered. I had finished; so i only noticed, tranced in this slow motion gait, all the way from the middle of the plaza, I only noticed this bench on the corner. It was empty. It was as empty as me.

I reached it as if it had been planned, built, and presented solely for me to sit on. I'd never noticed this bench before. Today it was all there was. I had been walking with my girlfriend at the time. She said, "Here?" This made me laugh for no reason. It was a bench that probably never held anyone seeing as it was located at such a wild crossroad. We sat there for hours, holding hands, making out. The whole world passed by in visible disbelief. People we knew stopped and talked and felt bazaar about any sincere interaction among all the strongly intentioned movement that surrounded us. The bench being there, its presence, caddy-corner to the whole intersection, seemed to validate the whole thing.