Inside me, it felt as though nothing changed. I graduated, and tried, and kept waiting for the culmination, completion, happiness. I kept thinking that I'd run into her again.
What I didn't realize until I happened upon her shockingly-weathered face all those years later was that time was passing so ceaselessly. The days in the sun, the daily dust, had aged us. The body was tighter now. Taut. The thing I kept thinking would happen now could never happen.
We'd been pulled toward grayness and the youths we were were fare behind. Husks, like an old snake's skin.
ひび