9:57 pm, 2007, by Caitlin Jefko

From MemoryArchive

Who: Caitlin Jefko
What: 9:57 pm
When: 1-27-07
Where: Mt. Horeb

It's 9:57 pm. I'm standing at the doorway of a comparably unfamiliar home to my own. My hands inside my pockets are unconsciously tearing at the discarded receipts and wrappers that have seemed to confuse these pockets with a trash can. I feel the vibration, and hear the calming buzz of the beat up piece of metal and plastic against my palm, reminding me that someone cares for me. I flip open the phone and mutter, "I'm coming..." I open the door, exposing myself instantly to the harsh wind and freezing flakes that have come to welcome winter. I cross the frosted pavement, as the headlights of my chariot do the same to me; illuminating my striped jacket with two buttons…which once had three.

The seat of my pants hits the car seat, fully expecting the leather to be warm. My skin just beyond tells me otherwise. It’s freezing in this moving room with wheels, yet the temperature doesn’t seem to disrupt my state. As the shifter migrates from “reverse” to “drive”, an unmistakable sigh escapes my lips. Breath I was unaware I had been storing in my little lungs leaps out leaving a smile as evidence of its departure. I shut my eyes and search with my right hand for a lever on the side of my seat to recline myself; enhancing the euphoric state I am slipping into.

My eyelids rise, startling me for being ignorant to the fact that they had ever been closed. I squint out the salt streaked window. Snow flutters past yellow spotlights of street lamp posts and settles atop mounds of gray slush. In this moment, I am happy. I can’t say how, and I can’t say why I have been embraced by my bliss, but it swallows me. The privilege of this experience is not often offered to me, so I take it in, and to cement it into memory I can’t help but declare,

“I am so happy right now. I could die, and that would be okay with me. Nothing could be better than right here….now.”