We were sitting in a parking lot, doing nothing — which is probably why I remember it.
It was late. The kind of late where the streetlights hum and your brain finally gets quiet.
No music. No rush. Just the shared silence between people who didn’t need to fill it.
Someone made a dumb joke. I laughed too hard.
Not because it was funny, but because I felt safe.
I didn’t realize it then, but that was the moment I stopped performing and just was.
No fixing.
No proving.
Just presence.
It didn’t last forever. Most good moments don’t.
But it’s the one I go back to when the world gets loud again.
A memory like that isn’t just something you had —
it’s something you carry.
Ja(y)den D. Harper -Author Collective 
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