Writing Practice 6/14 (the first of many extended "tone poems" about my time abroad)

It was early on the first morning of May. Or very, very late on the last night of April, depending on your perspective.

We were leaving the stupid yet somehow relentlessly enticing club that we had spent half of the semester trying to get into. It was the last time we would walk past the tall, bulky men who had been the deciders of our partyer fates for what seemed like a brief eternity.

We took a different way home that night. I shook my head, folded my brown, faux-leather-covered arms into my chilled chest and followed three of my favorite reckless wanderers into the night.  

As per usual, we opted for the street instead of the sidewalk. We pranced, ran and even jumped upon the uneven cobblestones that had come to feel more familiar than the smooth asphalt of our hometowns.

We were thirsty, so Kenz decided it would be a good idea to yell “AGUA?!” at some unsuspecting partygoers spilling onto the balcony of the sole party on an otherwise silent street.

The response was even more unexpected than her remark (which was made in a language that neither us nor the locals speak, mind you). The joyous strangers invited us into their home — an invitation which, looking back on it, should have been alarming — and we didn’t think twice before running up their creaky wooden stairs.

Consider this an ode to my semester of elated preposterousness.

We found ourselves in the middle of a party that was slowly thinning out. We were clearly the youngest party-goers in the crowd, but we weren’t there to mooch for adult beverages. Being the mature, responsible drunkards that we are, we were looking for an alcohol-free beverage to hydrate ourselves before the long trek ahead.

The overly-generous strangers complied, and Kenz went to the sink to fill empty Heineken bottles with the only non-alcoholic liquid to ever grace their glass bottoms. We made small talk with our saviors until multiple bottles had been filled, and eventually, we made our way back into the dark limbo between nighttime and daybreak.

I laughed as my friends reminisced about their wine-induced escapades, their voices echoing off the humble cream buildings surrounding us. It was a small miracle that no angry, robe-clad Frenchmen ran out of their homes to yell at our band of stereotypically rowdy Americans.

Green bottles clanked as they cracked against worn stones. Car lights flashed, warning the idiots dancing blissfully down the street that they had no place there. Birds sang a cheerful lullabye — or an alarming pre-dawn wakeup call, depending on your perspective.

It was one of the only times I’ve ever felt invincible. With the beat of the bass still pumping through my veins and remnants of a liquid confidence potion warming my throat, not a single anxious thought crossed my mind.

I was just a young girl being foolish with her equally irrational companions.

The streets were ours, and we were theirs.