11pm on 11/22/2015

Alyssa Ahlert

You don’t know it, until you suddenly do.

It slams into your chest with all the subtlety of a freight train;

You love her.

Looking at her gazing out over the cityscape,

it’s like that first breath of winter air,

harsh and brisk and beautiful in its sharpness.

And you feel so very young and fragile,

so incredibly old and strong.

The noisy symphony of cars battling it out for an inch of pavement

has become the soundtrack of your movie.

Your story.

Together written on stone steps and park benches,

and on every shirt stained with the soda

that came out of her nose when she laughed.

She knows it, and suddenly you do too.

And Casablanca can’t even begin to compare.