Life isn’t a song, though every day has its own soundtrack. Life isn’t a movie either, though every day is full of so many moving pictures.

You know this yet realize that the song is almost over and the last scene of the movie is being played out.

They always called you dramatic and by now you accept it. You write so you have to be dramatic. Moments are there to take in and dramatize. Perhaps you do this too much. Perhaps others should just leave you alone.

The music might mean a little too much but it always has. It’s not just a soundtrack. It’s a sigh of relief. It’s the sound of sadness. It’s the security of something. Something that makes sense and that’s beautiful as it soars. And as familiar songs play, you take it in and smile.

Moments like this–they can and do happen.

It’s the end of something, something that would be too difficult to sum up. It might have to take three hundred pages to do so. But it’s an end, and a beginning.

The sky so clear, the skyline surrounding you with its radiance.

You soak it in.

Somehow you just know. Somehow you know it’s time to say goodbye. To grow up. To get on with it.

The masses around you, most just kids, won’t get it. They’ll outgrow it. They’ll be too busy to get to this moment somewhere down the road. They’ll hear the same song sometime later and get so close to remembering, but it’ll be gone.

So you begin leaving, walking on roped-off streets. And to add an exclamation point, the band plays and serenades you into the night. One last song. An anthem to another generation, a song to another soul. But it doesn’t matter because they’re singing to you.

Yeah, you’re older. But a heart doesn’t have to get colder. And it doesn’t have to believe in the lies.

You stop for a moment and listen. A heart full. A mind wandering, wondering what tomorrow will bring.

You know you wrote about this moment six months earlier and that nobody could remotely care about that except for yourself. But it’s even better than you wrote it in the story.

You realize something. It’s not about living something in order to emulate it in a song or a scene. It’s about living.

You walk off as the song sings goodbye.

It’s about to all change in a short time. And you see where you’re going. And it looks pretty awesome.