We are young but we used to be younger.

Then we were children of the revolution, determined to enjoy ourselves, wringing the beauty out of every moment. Now we are adullts, trying to understand ourselves, wringing our cell phones:

“I’m afraid if I went back to then I wouldn’t take things back like I sometimes say I would. I’m afraid I would do more of them. And that it would be as good as I remember,” She says.

“Now it’s like we’re always before or after and never in the middle of it,” I say.

We hang up. I walk to my car to drive to a safe neighborhood to walk.

Minutes later I am 20 blocks away and several social classes up. Surrounded by huge, staring homes, I light a cigar. The tip grows and burns.

“Life’s a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death!” Rosalind Russell shouts in my mind. We’re not starving, we’ve forgotten how to be hungry.

I almost walk into a low hanging branch of a lilac tree. Cupping the blossom, like it will leak through my fingers, I lift it to my face. The smell of cigar and lilac drive into the two-car garage of my nose and crash into something in my mind.

I’m laughing. I’m thinking of Him. I’m texting her: He knows the plans He has for us.