the quartet

we were the talkers. we were the dancers. we were the laughers. we were the after party adventurers, the late night bar-hoppers, the cattle riding, car-window-crawling bridge seekers congealing somehow, suddenly, during the course of the wedding night. we read poems. we mocked the texans. we poked at ourselves. disagreed a bit, loved a lot, held ourselves up and out for each other, tried each of our friendships on for size and found not a one wanting.

with only a few connections in place beforehand, we added a perfect stranger to the mix and found something surprising and wholly new – the result of some sort of spontaneous combustion requiring an unrepeatable mix of alcohol, personalities, and photo booth spontaneity. and this thing we found ourselves inside, this many limbed entity of friendship, stood and breathed at the intersection of six dyads, three triads, and our single, splendid quartet. in a brilliant night watching two brilliant people gather their individual lives inside their arms and tie them together, this was our extension of their happiness – so fitting, so sweet, so playful in a way one could spend the rest of their life looking for it and never predict when or if it will show up next. 

the night was lush, the night was long, and eventually we found ourselves under a king-sized blanket, on an overly air-conditioned couch, resting in the quiet corners of the stories we were telling one another. exhaustion lapped at our feet stealing away the words we were speaking as we tried to stretch the hours in each other’s company until they were so thin we could see the morning sun through them. even after our neglected sleep chased us reluctantly to our beds, we woke, still firmly attached as others mingled in our midst. 

our goodbyes lingered as we hugged, clutching each other as much as the photos and phone numbers we had exchanged – all of them tenuous and unsatisfying objects functioning their best as evidence we existed together in a new way. 

and as space and time wedge themselves firmly between us, perhaps the most substantial thing left in our hands is the certainty that somewhere in that mysterious negative space between our quickly moving bodies and even quicker moving spirits, something glorious lived, however fleeting, and for that we are grateful.