How Northwestern Are You?

You have snuck onto the roof of Swift.

You have painted The Rock.

You have sung the Fight Song at a football game.

You have gotten lost in the hallways of Tech.

You have eaten late-night Burger King.

You have been in the vicinity of a cappella.

You have attended Dillo Day.

You have downloaded Yik Yak, the popular social media application.

You have deleted Yik Yak, the popular social media application.

You have taken a photo with Morty.

You have ridden in a SafeRide.

You have stayed up to see the sunrise on the lake.

You have skimmed readings hours before they were due.

You have received feedback to be more specific in discussion.

You have thought, I will show you specific, motherfucker.

You have barreled towards Chicago, specifically, in a loud car, with people you never imagined you’d know, the city’s crown of skyscrapers flickering, clearer now, almost — here.

You have turned on a desk lamp at two in the morning, a crescent of a friend’s face gleaming, the rest in shadow as she tells you a secret.

You have pressed the flat plane of your palm against a scrape on Dillo Day of all days, hand streaked with blood, laughing hard because you can’t care when the air’s this warm and the moon’s so full it looks like it’s holding its breath.

You have clambered into a SafeRide and SafeRidden to the beat of an unfamiliar song, a soundtrack to someone else’s life.

You have pushed down on the creased pages of a graded assignment and snagged yourself on a comment in the margins: Raise the stakes.

You have never raised any stakes on purpose, only ever dabbed sentences with words to bloat page counts and buy time.

You have said, for example, even to those who once looked from high up on a roof with you at a crosshatched campus, the lakewater so dark and starless it seemed empty: Let’s hang out soon/sometime/later.

You have lied without realizing, the most sorry way to tell a lie.

You have tried not to do this thing of imagining a place as disappearing after one critical moment because otherwise whole buildings dissolve and entire rooms sink away, drained.

You know how these moments appear because you have read an email from the dean that begins with Dear Students then speaks of sadness. And how deep it goes.

You have stayed quiet amidst suggestions to revisit rooftops, even from those who scream songs in cars with you and inspect raw, rock-rubbed wounds on Dillo Day with you and delete popular social media applications off of your phone for you.

You know in the years to come you’ll gather with friends on birthdays, long weekends, video calls on wearable pieces of technology, and maybe, if you are willing, another visit to the roof of Swift.

You can still imagine the lake without looking at it, like it’s for forever, like it’s waiting under your eyelids.

You, for now, cross the street and search for the thin blue shard of shorewater that sits behind Sheridan as it bends towards the lake.

You like to think you’re only one who stretches your gaze that far eastward, the rhythm of the crosswalk signal keeping time for you because the water is all still there, still there.