This one is for Point Park

There are old photos. Grainy. Probably taken on a disposable camera. We are 15 years old. We are at Point Park's summer ballet program. We met that first day. Rooms next to one another. Like a cheesy romance movie. We were instant friends. We weren’t ballet enough for the other girls. Or maybe they were too ballet for us. I think that you felt the same.

Though most things closed before classes were over. And we were many. Many years. Too young for the bars. We explored the streets of Pittsburgh until curfew. After curfew. It was still dirty and sketchy and interesting then. Just being free. In a new city. Was enough. We didn’t need to be granted admittance into any business. It was the streets that were ours.

We snuck out with an invite from one of the college students for that black box performance somewhere off campus. We walked across the Smithfield Street Bridge to some graffiti festival on Carson Street. There was that one weekend. That boy drove from Dayton. We ditched some program-planned forced-fun activity.

In one photo, I am in an Unwritten Law tank top, JNCOs, and hair too short for any respectable ballerina. (This may have been right before we dyed it. Fire engine red). I smile at the camera. Knowing I was in the moment. And that this moment would always matter. I am sure you remember the guy's name. But I just remember spray painting a stranger's car on the top of a parking garage with a girl I just met. But felt like I had known for years.

We wrote letters. Sent cards. You visited me in Pennsylvania. And when I moved to New York. You made me better. You made me adventurous. You moved to New York, briefly. Then to LA. The distance between LA and New York was much greater than the distance between PA and Ohio. Or maybe it wasn’t the distance at all. Maybe it was that 22 is harder than 16. The letters became sparser as our lives became busier. As we adulted. As more time passed, the more time it created.