Impermanence
August 4th, 2024 The tan lines left when you forgot to remove your watch in the scorching sun, The stamp of your seltzer can in the sand before the wave has won. The imprint of the textured chair on your legs folded under your weight, The feeling of fullness that lasts just a brief while perhaps after the last thing you ate. Short-lived, transient, reversible. The bus ride to school, the excitement of new notebooks and pencils, the anxiety of who to sit beside this year -- elementary. The communal locker in the other wing, the half-days before the holidays, the stress of finals every summer. The mornings spent at the library cafe, the hours between classes pondering what to spend your dining points on, the community you begin to become a part of -- college. The all-nighters before every exam, the post-exam festivities of a tight-knit class, the waffling over what we felt were big Life decisions. The first Cardiology rotation, the goal to just keep your patients alive through the ni