Reunion

Holy Faith Convent class '90-'97

Already we are giggling; emoticons of smiley faces
bounce through the chat windows of cyberspace
in a wild game of catch-up tag. We're tickled by
this technology we could have hardly imagined
when we still wore white high-tops, and our dreams
were of prom night – the date, the dress – the slow dance
of drifting apart not yet begun. That summer, now
ten years past, at my going away party, my best
friends gathered around me, and Stevie Wonder
on the tape deck sang us the ritual of our tears
and farewells – that's what friends are for.
And today, as sudden as the waking of cicadas
after their long sleep, we've found each other;
we add each other to buddy lists and IM for hours
about who's doing what – the weddings, the travels.
We save the losses for now, the conversation tinged
bittersweet with strangeness and still too fragile
for anything but the lightest of niceties. Still, we revel
in it, wrapped in "remember when's" the years fall away
like husks, and the seventeen-year-olds in us leap out
and we feel them inside us thick and singing – alive.