96 SYM.

Summer 2015

 I was begrudgingly attending a pre college program at Yale the summer into my senior year.  Emma was a year younger than me. We sat across from each other during creative writing. She was always glaring around the room, using any available moment she could to oppose an argument or interject a thought. Emma’s love for 70′s music, painting and black iced coffee would eventually become things I found myself liking. When our creative writing class ended we were moved into a class centered around beat generation poets like Allen Ginsberg & Gregory Corso. Emma had a small crush on our teacher who used to take us off campus to buy us coffee and talk about her job since she herself was a college student. When I wasn’t in class I would go with her to help paint a mural in one of the large art studios across campus, although sometimes I would just hangout and mix paints. She would often butt heads with another girl who had made desperate attempts to catch my eye since the second day, until we would later find out I was one of many others. It wasn’t until the middle of the second week that we had met James. James was from Canada and we both became friends through our shared respect for jazz, I would later discover homeshake through him. One night when Emma was mad at me, I had coordinated with him to play careless whisper out of the window, since his dorm was at the top. She later returned completely dissatisfied by my lack of attendance. I had given the signal maybe 3 or 4 times before James finally came out and serenaded Emma with the sweet sound of his saxophone as we slow danced at the bottom.

On the last night of the program, all the kids come and hangout on the quad till the sun comes up. I remember counting each hour dreading the dawn of goodbyes. 

Our goodbye was quick, as a single tear rolled down her face. 

I said something around the lines of “you’re not going to cry are you?” which really weren’t the most appropriate choice of words.

Model : Keshell Scipio 

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