we wandered the hallways laughing about nothing because we feared the silence. chugging monster and hating the taste. we chewed our gooey sandwiches, marshmallow dripping down our smiles, sentences jumbled in s’mores, memories tumbled in menial moments, golden hour plunged in the mountains.
            we used an elevator to rise to a dorm room alight with music. eight of us lounging on olive stitched couches, yelling over one another because every word is critical, and we desire to be heard. i sat in the windowsill, observing the mountains and observing the group of us misfit art kids, fascinated by words and stories and how they intertwine.
one girl sat in a chair diagonal from me. the light hit her cheekbones and exponentiated her radiation of light. she smiled and laughed because she knew she was pretty, but she didn’t know that even the light favors her. she hunted for a movie to entertain us all and another girl bought cookies to celebrate.
the girl next to her remained quiet. she listened to music that made her happy and the others told her it wasn’t time for sad music. but the orange light hit her too, and she submitted a poem about a circus and happy rain.
we hoarded cookies and words, memories and inspiration, and strung them together like an art project. we coated them in glue and bonded them together to create a scrapbook, but we called it a journal because that’s what writers do. 
we drew on each other in colored pens, drawing flowers and planets and using the same pens to write our feelings on lined paper. we sat in circles in libraries, around ponds and dining hall tables, discussing poems with cups of orange guava juice and plates of Amherst flavored pizza.
we dreaded goodbyes and submitted words threaded with emotion. We stayed up way too late in dorms with windows overlooking western mass. They came from all over the country, all over the world, to write in a new realm full of trees and brick buildings. Over one hundred kids brought together by their shared love of sharing words.