Whatever happened to the electricity of the night, I wonder, walking in the unusually warm summer evening through my hometown— a small port city just on the edge of the harbor. The smell of fresh rain and gasoline from the boats idling to dock still bring out the sea’s strong briny musk; the city’s lights, winking in the distance like sequins, still bend over the glossy sidewalks as though reflected across a mirror. But the magic in it all, well, that’s different now.

The bar across from the park is loud tonight, but its crowd and its laughter and its sweet-smelling wine—a mysterious otherworld when I was sixteen— don’t tempt me like it used to. I’ve been there before, many times in many cities. Still, I walk by to catch a glimpse of strangers’ flirtatious smiles under ambient lighting; I’m not sure why.

I’m alone as I often am, and I think of you tonight as I stop over the bridge. It’s industrial and unromantic, but I imagine running into you here, a knowing smile on the both of us, as though this had been the plan all along—to meet here in this very moment, on this rickety old bridge all these years later. You’d say something like, “I have so much to tell you.”

The geese down below churn their webbed feet beneath the surface and make ripples across the lake, and with it, take the waking dream. I keep walking. It’s getting colder, and I know you won’t come.  I’m not sure you even live here, at all, anymore.

It’s been quite some time since I’ve been here myself, but muscle memory is the strangest thing. I’ve got no destination in mind, but my feet seem to know the path. And I think, maybe that’s where the excitement went…you get older, and even getting lost feels too familiar. As I round the corner toward an ice cream parlor (I wonder if it’s open this time of night), I try to remember the last time an evening walk meant endless possibilities; when, in all this aimlessness, I’d been sure there was something life-changing just up ahead, and all I’d had to do was keep on walking.

Tonight, though, as with the many nights and— even days— that pass as I get older, I take my dripping ice cream cone and head back toward the park without any expectation of surprise. Before I get to the fountain, I see a couple nuzzling each other on a bench underneath a cluster of willows and look away. The humidity in the air, the softness of their kisses against each other’s skin, the cover of shadow— it’s too intimate for an audience. But I can’t help but smile and appreciate the way they’ve stolen the space and claimed it theirs. All is fair in love and war, and I wish I’d had let you kiss me longer all those times you’d tried and I’d said there were too many people around.

By the time I get back to my hotel, I’m halfway done with the cone but linger outside; it’s intoxicating out here, but there’s nowhere else to walk, and even if there were, I know I wouldn’t find what I wanted. It’s here I realize that the electricity I’d been wondering about—it’d never been about the night, really, only that we might fall in love.

Sweetness of vanilla still on my tongue, I throw my napkins in the trash and head back to my room, contented. Because I’ve found the night is still enchanting—and so is the day, and so is this moment, and so is everything else, even when you’re not here.

And that is the new magic.

END