Scampus Nights

Me and my buddy Abe used to smoke weed at the grad school. It sat on top of a hill. Best sunsets, perfectly framed by the leafless trees. The way the sky melted and turned every cloud orange and pink and red. Abe and I would shoot the shit. Sitting there, smoking dope under a tree, watching the sunset. It was one of the happiest parts of my life. 

One time, we started talking about doomsday. What a wild concept, right? That there’s a day where the end is officially marked. I guess that’d be nice to know. 

Abe and I made a bet. Well, we probably made lots of them over the years. China or Russia. Age we get drafted. Nuclear or nah. We used to giggle thinking about it. Maybe the most fun was reenacting how it would all happen. What it would take. We’d push lighters and pencils across the ground to show troop movements. Just boy shit, ya know? 

I like to think of that time as a dream. Lucid dream. Like, we knew this was going to happen all along. It wasn’t if, it was when. And somehow, getting high just made it all a little absurd. Laughable and absurd. I would do anything to be back there. Just to see the sunset again at the grad school under the leafless trees on a late spring day. You can smell the earth and the sweet of dew. Perhaps that’s where I go when the clock strikes midnight. Ya know?