By Esha Ahktar ’25
Contributing Writer
Of all the mornings we spent together, I most clearly remember the sunlight. Her pink and orange curtains seized the dawn sunshine and threw it across her bedroom, lighting up our faces as we procrastinated starting our days. I remember the stack of perfectly curated books from Verso and Haymarket that she had no intention of reading, titles like “Making the Revolution Global” and “A People’s Guide to Capitalism.” Lavender and musk from my perfume lingered in the sheets. It was April, and we both knew it was pretend, but that didn’t make it any less fun to play. She had a bathtub, and a backyard! We shared a queen size bed, what a luxury! A sure step up from the twin XLs and communal bathrooms our collegiate existence confined us to.
One Sunday, we finally crawled out of bed for brunch— it was well past noon. We considered making eggs in her kitchen, but she was out of groceries, so off to the dining hall we went. Walking hand in hand, our hair unbrushed and eyes still puffy, we admired the flowers blooming outside her front porch. My mind jumped to a future ten, twenty, thirty years away, waking up to springtime blossoms in our garden, not in shitty sublet student housing, but in our home. Our home. A home with a turquoise couch and a 40 inch TV where we watched The Great British Bake Off on the weekends and a backyard and a bathtub and a queen size bed. And I knew that’s where her mind went, too. Neither of us had graduated college nor had any idea where we were going, and she was leaving in a year, but she made it so easy to dream. Time stood still when we were together.
“You make me feel like tulips,” she giggled in my ear. I blushed, my cheeks blooming into the pink that adorned the petals. It was April, and there was still a cool chill in the air. So we shivered, walking hand in hand, hoping to make it before the dining hall closed.
