When old friends meet again, everything about the present current lives, age, status, automatically fades into silence.

The body switches, quietly, back to an earlier version of itself. The way we speak, the way we laugh, even the angle at which we lift our heads all revert without effort.

The years I thought I had forgotten, the details time seemed to sand away, are somehow kept intact inside the other person. As if someone had frozen my youth for safekeeping.

It turns out we are collectors of each other. You keep my eighteen. I keep your twenty-two.

The versions of ourselves we assumed had long scattered were never lost at all. They were carefully stored in someone else, alive, intact, untouched.

The moment we meet again, youth quietly thaws.



—— XC Scribbles · 拾肆 XIV 📚